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My daughter used to have some really cute mixed up ways of saying big words, when she was two and learning to talk. Actually, she was nearly three before she held conversations and it was worth the wait.
She'd be bouncing around the house with tons of energy and I'd ask her to calm down a little. She'd yell, "I can't Mommy, I have 'extra injury!'"
Other times, when we would go outside to play or to the park, she would tell me that she was very happy to go so she could get her "ekercize."
When I got home tonight from work I had a huge scare. After the fact. Things were fine and my daughter was sleeping sweetly in bed. But my mom told me that this afternoon the school bus ran out of gas on the way home and instead of calling the school for help, the STUPID bus driver allowed a passing high school boy (from the same school) to give some of the kids a ride into town. My mom picked her up and found out my daughter tried to call her but my mom's cell phone was off. I was at work oblivious to all of this.
My daughter attends a private school and I've always thought we were in this nucleus of protection that was nearly inviolable. I sign all of these releases every year about what they can and cannot do with or without my permission. Yet, it never fails to un-nerve me when people I entrust my daughter to pull a fast one on me. My own family members have been guilty of "disappearing" with my daughter. I get so freaked out and scared and wild-my heart practically goes into orbit-when I don't know where my daughter is that I could commit a violent act immediately.
It's this parent thing; this totally irreversible protective mother instinct of mine that they are messing with. Plus, she's never had a dad in her life. I do all of it. Gladly and willingly but very, very seriously and carefully. I don't take any chances. If my instinct warns me, I listen. I know exactly what parents mean when they say they would lay down their life for their child because I know that feeling. I would die without question if it saved my daughter from harm. I've been this way since my daughter was two hours old-a mother bear with ferocious protectiveness for her cub-and it will never leave me until I'm turfed under.
I never gave the school permission to let my daughter get into a pickup truck of some well-intentioned? dude that I've never met. Period. I don't care how damn freaking helpful he was, I have three phone numbers I can be reached at-supposedly kept with them on a card in the bus-and they had better call me before ever doing this again. That's what I have a cell phone for. That's what the idiotic bus driver has a cell phone for.
My daughter was scared and didn't know what to do. My mom told me this. She also told me not to yell at my daughter; it's not her fault. Everything is okay now, but what if it had not been okay? Sometimes people think they are "helping," and I have said this repeatedly in my life: If I don't think it is helpful to me, then it is NOT help. I am not being "helped" if I feel quite the opposite. No, this wild-assed decision of the bus driver to ditch the bus by the side of the road and farm out the students to passersby is going to come around and bite her in the hind end. I've got my bear-teeth out.
I think what scares me most in life is that my daughter is growing up and I won't always have control. I won't always be there to protect her. I try hard to teach her everything she needs to know, to give her every piece of information which might help her survive when things get tough. I thought I had said enough times, in enough ways, that she is not to go anywhere with strangers and if in doubt, call me. Yeah, she's probably seen this kid at school, he's probably very nice, and that's why there was this gray area today. Where my daughter was uncertain and got talked into something. Persuaded.
I've got lots of energy fuming through me about this incident. (This is actually the second of such incidents.) My own special energy, according to my boss, can "be used for good or bad." Apparently, he believes I'm affective with both; there's a power thing going on. (I'm just a simple strong person, that's all.)
I don't set out to upset others, but when they vicariously upset me over my daughter and place her in a vulnerable position, they are in danger of receiving a lot of my "extra injury!"
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