Here is instance #1:
One day, Jerry and I were driving out of our neighborhood. We passed a house that is a little ways from our house. It did not have a fence at that time, and there was one of those giant trampolines in the back yard. I noticed a young little girl (under 6) jumping up and down on it, and I didn't see anyone else around. I couldn't see the whole trampoline, so someone else might have been there. The trampoline did NOT have any protective sides on it -- just the flat trampoline part.
I IMMEDIATELY thought of the paraplegic young woman that Jerry had been treating. She was paralized from the neck down. HOW did she get that way? She had fallen off a trampoline and broken her neck when she was a child.
I told Jerry to STOP THE CAR. He said, "Why?" I said I need to go find that little girl's mother and tell her how dangerous it is to let that little girl jump on that giant trampoline without protective side curtains!"
Jerry said, "You need to mind your own business!!!", and he kept on driving.
Here is instance #2:
Today we were at a restaurant being waited on by a lady with only one arm. Her other arm was gone below the elbow. I asked her about her arm and told her I was amazed she could wait tables. She told Jerry and me about how she also teaches special needs children. She said there was a little boy in her class that had only one arm and one leg. He was only 6 years old. I asked her what had happened.
She told me that when the child was only 18 months old, his mother was mowing the lawn on a riding mower with him in her lap. She dropped him, and she ran over him with the mower, cutting off his arm and his leg!
I GUARANTEE YOU if I had seen that happening, I wouldn't care WHAT Jerry or anybody else said to me, I would have run over to that woman, and I would have BEGGED her to PLEASE get that baby off that mower!
Here is my question:
Does my wanting to protect those children -- to the point of bringing it up to the parent(s) -- make me pious and self-righteous?
I can promise you that if YOU came up to me and told me that something I was doing could harm my children, I would LISTEN TO YOU. I actually did it when my daughter was young. A teacher at her Day Care when she was 3 years old came out to the parking lot to talk to me one evening after I had picked Tammy up.
Tammy had not been there very long, and she didn't like it. She had stayed with my Mother prior to that. When she saw me coming every evening, she would start crying. She would RUN to me, and I would RUN to her and grab her up in my arms and hug and kiss her.
The teacher explained to me that I was REINFORCING her behavior and her feeling that she was being deserted and tortured every day. She told me that I needed to just walk up to her -- take her by the hand very calmly -- and walk out to the car.
I THANKED the lady for her advice. I did NOT rebuke her or tell her it was none of her business. I did exactly what she asked me to do, and Tammy changed her behaviour immediately as well. She was right!
I was NOT the type to defend my children's bad behaviour either. If a neighbor complained that my child had done something wrong, and I found out they were right about it, I made my children apologize or fix whatever it was. My daughter broke into a neighbor's little lawnmower shed one time with a neighborhood boy. We made her completely clean out that shed and APOLOGIZE to the parents, and we offered to pay for any damage. As I recall, the other kid's parents did nothing.
I have a new NON-wadder blouse to show you. Jerry doesn't like it. I may wear it once or twice anyway. I'll come back tomorrow and show it to you because it doesn't really go with my questionnaire today, lol.
Hugs, Joy
