Stranger Danger

We had a really fun Friday last week - but that's for another night with more spare time - just a quickie tonight!

You know those regrets you pile up as you go through the parenting years? Stranger danger is a biggie for me. Sure, our city is huge, the playgrounds absolutely swamped with people and odd fellows lurk just about everywhere. But that I would have traded my peace of mind for my child's..... We had a chat with P last summer about running off with strangers (he was in a most affable and simultaneously far-running stage at the time.) We tried to keep it simple and non scary, just the very basics. But he was Fascinated. And full of questions. Questions we, obviously, couldn't really answer. So, after enough verbal dodgeball, he turned it into a game and devised (of course) a plot: I would try to lure him to my car (the couch) and he would get away. Over and over he overcame his imaginary captors. And then the day turned to night and I hoped to be done with it.

But somehow the word "kidnapped" has cropped up lately. I've stretched my two brain cells thin thinking about where its reared its ugly head and I can't put my finger on it. I know he learned about "burglars" from a picture book last month, adding yet another thing to fear (I reassured him we own nothing worth burgling and he seemed satisfied ;) but the kidnapping bit alludes me. BB is occasionally "monster-nabbed......"

At any rate, he's been mystified about who to trust. He won't accept food from strangers (a waitress once offered him olives from her personal stash and he balked) and he looked at a woman working at the coop (who handed him a chocolate sample) like she had just sprouted green horns. I've tried reassuring him about the good that lives in the world, but the deed is done and the kid sees doom.

Then today, as he rode my scooter down hill at a nice clip, he shouted up to me, "Mama. Everyone's friends have friends. And their friends have other friends. And those friends have other friends. And if you think about it, the whole world is actually friends. Because everybody is somebody's friend." I love deep thoughts by four year olds :) He decided that maybe the world was really a nice place after all. And, according to P logic, kidnappers don't have Any friends, so we don't have to worry about them tricking us....

I hope this newfound optimism sticks, cuz he gives every stranger he meets a look that crosses cynicism with suspicion. And that sort of look looks a little funny on a four year old :) Really, I would so love for him to have a carefree smile. Like the one he had before, ya know, his mother accidentally scared the holy freak out of him last year.... :) (Ok, so he's never been the carefree smile type, ever, but his quiet, questioning glances carried just a little less glare before The Talk :)