Conference moira::parenting_v3

    I don't know about books on this, but we handle it by telling them over
    and over and over and over and over........you get the point! Our 5 yr.
    old is getting pretty good about this, he rarely runs out without
    looking. He needs an occasional reminder to stay close to us, or the
    car, when in a parking lot. But he is pretty good about it. Our 3 yr.
    old, on the other hand, is horrible about it, and needs *constant*
    reminders. She will exit the car, in a parking lot, and just run right
    out into the traffic lane! She has caused some heart stopping moments
    for my wife, who is usually the one to run the errands with the kids.
    As far as holding a hand when in a parking lot, on the side of a
    street, etc. (anywhere there might reasonably be expected to be
    traffic), we absolutely insist on hand holding, even for the 5 yr. old.
    We don't move till all hands are held...and then we don't let go. Our 3
    yr. old...the "miss independent" counterpart of your Mr.
    independent...usually hates this, and will cry and squirm. We do it
    anyway. Their safety is paramount here. We walk only when hand is held,
    and stop when the pulling away/squirming/crying begins (assuming it is
    safe to stop...otherwise we walk to a safe spot, holding child's hand
    firmly...only when they stop fighting do we continue to our
    destiantion. When one of us has all 3 kids, it looks like this: hold
    baby in left arm, hold 3 yr. old's hand in right hand, have 5 yr. old
    hold 3 yr. old's hand (alternate plan...5 yr. old may hold onto Mommy's
    purse, Daddy's belt, or put hand in a parent's pocket on the left
    side...all these can be felt by the parent who knows immediately if he
    let go or held on). We probably look like a small circus troop, but it
    keeps them safe (as possible), and gets us where we're going!
    Agian, just keep telling him over and over and aover again.....he
    *will* learn eventually! I'd also make the hand holding mandatory, but
    that's our personal preference! Good luck!
    --dave--

    I used a safety harness with Kat and with Steven.  I started it
    when Kat was a wee tyke when a friend of mine grabbed her son's
    hand to keep him from dashing across a street, and dislocated his
    shoulder.  The doctor said it's very easy for a child's shoulder
    to become dislocated.
    
    Anyway, I found the harness to be an ideal solution -- it lets the
    child have some independence, but lets you keep a tight grip. You
    can loop it over your wrist to have your hands a little freer. 
    And it helps keep the child from getting lost in a crowd.
    
    --bonnie

    
    re. 0
    
    	I think it is a good idea to tell them about cars when they
    are little, but I would not count on a 2.5 yr old to remember and
    to judge time and distance. I would explain the process (ie. look both
    ways, etc...). I can trust my 5 year old now, but not when she was
    3 or even 4. When my hands are full, I have my daughter hold on
    to my pocket book strap or my skirt or something.
    
    Eva.

This isn't prevention, and I certainly hope Berk doesn't 
have any more "close calls."  But if he does... you can 
leave a lasting impression on him by letting him see your 
(exaggerated) reaction.

They're called "terrible twos," but typically two-year-olds 
are developing a lot of compassion.  With Alex, I found that 
a dramatic "performance" once in a while gave her a much 
clearer message than verbal logic alone: letting my eyes 
fill up and overflow while I explain how *hard* cars are and 
how they could knock over *my little girl* and she would 
have a terrible ouch before I could do anything to stop it 
[sniff SNIFF/intense hug!].  I didn't go overboard on the 
severity of possible injuries--I wanted her to remember my 
anxiety, not a grisly scenario.

Now (age 5 1/2) she occasionally starts to skip ahead of me 
as we walk in to the store; all I need to do is say "No 
running, this is a PARKING LOT" (emphasis being given as 
though PARKING LOT = SLAVERING RABID BOAR).

Leslie

    I remember seeing a neighbor's dog get hit and killed by a bus when I
    was very young (4 or 5). Boy, did that drive home (no pun intended) 
    the point of being very careful around cars!
    
    My cousin, who grew up in my neighborhood but now lives in a nice,
    quiet suburb, impressed traffic safety on her three boys by pointing
    out road kill to them, and explaining how the nice, cute, squirrel
    wound up all over the road. I admit it's somewhat crude and may even
    seem cold, but it proved effective in their case. Whenever we take her
    kids to the neighborhood park, (which means crossing a busy street
    without a traffic light) it still amazes me to watch how careful the 
    three of them are about looking both ways, and holding hands, etc. At
    various times, I've heard each of them remark how they "didn't want to
    wind up like that sqirrel (or turtle, or cat, etc.)".
     
    Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
    
    Freddie

    A fairly effective communication technique is to point out where
    squirrels, racoons, whatever have gotten run over in the road.  Sure,
    it seems a bit morbid, but they notice anyway, and it really
    illustrates the possible costs of carelessness.
    
    But this is still preperation for the future.  I insist on hand
    holding through about age 6, as attention is still too unreliable
    before. No exceptions.  No interest in child's desire for appearance of
    mature independence.  When my arms were full, I simply made them act as
    if holding onto a "virtual hand," and stay right by my side.  Like a
    dog well trained to walk at heel, it works pretty well even when the
    "leash" is removed (though the training will wear off much quicker in a
    kid!).
    
    		- Bruce

    I, too, used the squashed dead animal in the road technique.  I said
    that a car had smushed the animal into a pancake, so it died.  I 
    explained that if a car runs over someone, he becomes a pancake, too, and
    that doctors can't fix pancakes.   I then said that if that happened to
    them, my heart would break and I would die.
    
    Worked like a charm.  We also hold hands when we're walking through 
    parking lots (I'm sorry, but there are some crazy drivers in parking
    lots) and I've never had a problem.  In fact, if one of them starts
    wandering out towards the street or parking lot, the other will yell,
    "Hey!!  Do you want to be a PANCAKE ?!?!?!"

    The repetition technique was required for a long time.  Along with
    explaining the horrors.  By about 4, hand-holding wasn't requried
    any more, but an older person giving directions was for crossing the
    street.
    
    Car parks are another matter altogether.  I have seen some of the
    most horrendous examples of drivers' inattention in car parks.  Up
    until age 6 we hold hands in car-parks and if that means juggling
    packages and whatever to do so then so be it.  Even today, our nine
    year old will hold our hands in a car park if her visibility is not
    clear.
    
    Stuart

    My daughter just turned 7 and I still hold her hand in parking lots.
    
    When she was little she had a problem with the end of the friveway.  If
    she
    was busy playing with her head down, she would not be aware of where
    the driveway ended and the street began.  We bought a can or neon
    orange spray paint and sprayed a stop line in the driveway.  It worked
    and by the time it was no longer needed, it had worn off.

    My opinion - 2.5 is far too young to expect a child to be responsible
    for his safety around cars.  He may want to be mister independence,
    don't they all, but hand holding is still necessary at 5.
    
    When I go out with my four, Baby is on left hip, 5 year old has hand in
    my left pocket, four year old hods my right had, and his five year old
    brother then holds his hand.  We all stop, look both ways, usually
    after me making them look cause they still don't automatically do it on
    their own, then proceed.  Or, baby is in stroller, one child on either
    side holding the stroller handle, and one child holding my pocket.  The
    pocket is a good idea because you can feel it if they let go.
    
    We also use the "dead skunk in the middle of the road" bit.  It works
    and it is a bit of brutal reality - if a car hits you, you don't bounce
    around like in the cartoons, you get squashed.
    Remember - the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  A 2 year old is
    too young for vigilance, and too you for "freedom".
    

    We live on a busy road with curves near enough so that cars can't slow
    down properly.  Speed limit is around 35 (cars do more like 45).
    
    From the time our children were infants we have impressed on them any
    way we could how dangerous cars are.  We use a railroad tie about 10
    feet from the end of the driveway as a reminder.  We don't even let our
    8 year old cross the road by himself yet.  Every time we leave our 3 year
    old for a few minutes we make her repeat the "RULE" - Don't go near the
    road.
    
    So far we have had no trouble.  My son crossed the road once with a
    friend when he was about 3.5 and our reaction was so strong that he
    has never done it again.  A good honest dose of fear in a situation
    that can be life-threatening is not something I shy away from. 
    
    Parking lots are very frightening and I always hld the little one's
    hand.  My older one still crosses sometimes without looking both ways
    but parent vigilance and a loud stop are enough to get him to look
    around.
    
    I won't compromise their safety just because they want to be a big kid!

    Thanks Parents. Some excellent ideas. Yes, I whole-heartedly agree that
    2.5 is much too young to be walking on the sidewalks, streets or
    parking lots alone. He's pretty good about stopping when told to stop
    and I make him take a look with me. It's the situation like getting out
    of your car in the driveway and having him run a little to close to the
    road that makes me nervous and we do remind him CONSTANTLY and give him
    instructions before making any move (Stand with your hand on the car,
    walk to the front of the car and stand there, hold my pocketbook, etc).
    It's those horrible "home" accidents that I probably fear most. I love
    the idea of a marker at the end of the driveway (spray paint or
    otherwise) and will use it once we get back into our house. 
    
    Guess no parent never rests on this issue. 
    
    Again, thanks.
    Andrea

    I feel a little better after reading this note - I thought I was the
    only one tired of hearing myself over and over say "Don't do so-and-so
    or you'll end up hurt/squashed, etc".  I suspect they are just as tired
    of hearing me as I am and ignoring everything I say. If there are other
    ideas for how to make lasting impressions for situations not in the
    parking lot I'd be interested. Here's why:
    
	I just had a very sleepless night.  The kids weren't up - but one
of them kept me up.  Seems that yesterday I put the just-turned-4-year-old
in his room for a time-out because he left out the front door without
asking (that's a rule in our house).  I was downstairs fixing them dinner
when hubby came home.  He went upstairs and found the incarcerated child
standing on the window sill (4-5" worth) - THE WINDOW WAS OPEN and only the
screen was between him and a fall from the THIRD STORY and you know how
easily the screens come out! 

All night long all I could think of was WHAT IF HE HAD FALLEN OUT OF THE 
WINDOW!

This is only a couple of days after he was standing in the window of our 
bedroom playing with the blinds (two stories up) and was told in no 
uncertain terms that he was NEVER to do that again.  

We currently are between houses and are renting a townhouse - we'll be
moving in the next couple of weeks to a new house.  In our old house I had
put up a gate across their window to prevent such an accident. He also has
an almost-2-year-old brother who watches EVERYTHING he does and then tries
to do it too! 

I just don't know what to do with this child to help him understand that he
is vulnerable and that things he does can cause SERIOUS injury and possibly
death to him or his brother.   IMHO, John and I have been very consistent
in our discipline, I don't consider us overprotective, we spank
occasionally (life threatening situations - although he wasn't spanked
after either of the window-sill incidents), we discuss with him the
consequences, etc.  Timeouts haven't worked except to remove him from the
current situation but then he just starts over again.  He is rarely left 
alone because of situations like this.

This isn't a bad kid - he's just very curious and doesn't seem to 
understand the consequences of his actions. 

BTW, the second week in this townhouse our 17-year-old dog went off the 
two-story deck and died.  The kids were never told about that but I 
considered bringing it up in hopes that he would understand a bit more 
about falling.

Sorry for the venting - I am just so worried.  

any ideas on what to do to help him understand?  I think he is too young to 
make the connections but we need to do something so he doesn't hurt himself. 

Karen

    re .13
    
    Karen,
    
    To illustrate the point to your son, could you drop an egg or an old
    plate from his bedroom window, and then take him to the ground floor to
    show him what happened?  As with the "road pancakes", once a child sees
    the effect, it helps put two and two together.
    
    Goodness knows I gave my parents enough grey hairs when I climbed where
    I wasn't supposed to!  Fortunately, we had a great swingset and lots of
    trees in the yard.
    
    
    Judi
    

    Maybe I'm way off base with this one, but PANCAKES....ROAD PIZZA?!?!?
    
    Isn't there enough killing, death and violence in the world, without
    exposing an under 5 to such gross looking things as sqashed animals.  I
    see blood and guts enough with my ambulance work, and I STILL get a
    sick feeling seeing a poor, dead, helpless animal in the road
    However, I DO agree with the idea of dropping an egg from the window,
    or how about timeout in the "bad boy corner" where you can keep and eye
    on him?
    
    There has been a time or two where I've passed a dead animal in the
    road, AJ (3.5) has inquired about it, I've simply said he's sleeping,
    that's all.  In his life he'll be exposed to enough killing and violence
    without letting him see a dead animal.  Don't we do our best not to
    allow them to watch violence on TV, then turn around to show them
    bloodied animals??  I find that kind of hypocritical!!
    Just my radical opinion
    Lyn
    

re: .15

I saw a couple of references to "pancakes", but I see no reference to "Road 
Pizza".  Perhaps you could point out what I missed.  If someone had used such 
a term, I would agree with you that it's in very poor taste.
 
I can understand your not agreeing with this method of educating children 
about the dangers of venturing into the street.  But I do object to lying to 
children about death and to characterizing points of view as "hypocritical",
when IMO, they aren't.

>    There has been a time or two where I've passed a dead animal in the
>    road, AJ (3.5) has inquired about it, I've simply said he's sleeping,
>    that's all.  In his life he'll be exposed to enough killing and violence
>    without letting him see a dead animal.  

There's no preventing him from seeing it.  He's _already_ seen it.  All you've 
done is misrepresented what he's seen.  You don't have to stop, get out of the 
car, and point out the gore to him.  He doesn't have to see any more than he's 
already seen.  All you have to do is to answer truthfully that the animal is 
dead.  If you want to use the event to make a point, all you have to do is to 
continue by saying that the animal is dead because it got hit by a car.  It 
got hit by a car because it was in the street.

>    Don't we do our best not to
>    allow them to watch violence on TV, then turn around to show them
>    bloodied animals??  I find that kind of hypocritical!!

I do my best not to allow my children to watch gratuitous, exaggerated, phony, 
made for tv (or the movies) violence.  I would not go out of my way to find a 
dead squirrel.  But however fortunate it is, encountering an animal that has 
been killed in traffic is just about impossible.  

Dropping an egg from the second story has to do with falls from heights, not 
venturing into the road.  And as for punishing, I think it's a valid and 
necessary thing to do, but in another note, perhaps in V2, there was a 
statement that I think makes sense.  Punishing a child who goes into the 
street may teach a child that it is the _getting_caught_ in the street that is 
bad.  What using dead animals does is to teach a child that being in the 
street may result in your being struck by a vehicle.  _That_ is what it bad.

Clay

    re: .15
    
    To shield my son from dead animals, I'd have to keep him in the
    house with the curtains drawn.  We live in an area with lots of
    squirrels, frogs, raccoons, skunks, and other small animals; a
    certain number of them cross the street without looking and a
    certain number of them become highway fatalities of a sort. 
    Sometimes in the street right in front of our house.  
    
    I don't believe in exposing him to gratuitous violence, but I
    don't believe in lying to him or in denying reality for him,
    either.  It's perfectly obvious that there are dead animals on the
    streets.  I can't very well tell him they're sleeping because I
    don't believe that.  The soul may still be alive somewhere and
    there may be a resurrection some day, but for now that body there
    is just plain dead.  Besides, describing death as sleep has been
    known to cause kids to be afraid to fall asleep, afraid they'll
    die. 
    
    I've always thought that the best way to prepare my children to
    face the violence and killing and other unpleasant realities of
    life isn't to deny their existence but to tell them the truth and
    try to teach them ways to cope with the truth.  It seems like if I
    were to deny the reality of what they see with their own eyes, try
    to tell them that it's not what they thought it was, I would be
    teaching them to distrust their own judgement.  That might make
    them easier to manage when they're little, but I don't think it
    would help them in the long run.  I'm not always going to be
    around to protect them; they have to learn to live life on their
    own.  We may disagree on this point but please don't call me a
    hypocrite because I don't want to deny the reality of what my
    children perceive. 
    
    --bonnie

    TV violence is intentional (people enjoy killing other people, or
    kill them for greed, jealousy, etc.), while dead animals from cars
    are an accident, there was no ill will involved.  To me that is
    what makes the tv violence so bad.  The gore may be disgusting,
    but it is the people killing people that I am disturbed by more.
    An animal that looks like it is sleeping isn't gorey anyway.
    (although to explain why it is dead with no external injuries may
    be).
    	Linda

If someone told my child that the dead animals in the road or on the side of
the road were just sleeping, I would worry that my son would think that
he *could* be safely in the road.  Knowing my 2 yr old son, he would lie
down on the side of the road and tell me he was sleeping, too.

I agree that it sounds harsh to point out the animals and tell the children
that, but unless you choose a particularly gorey carcass, I think it can
be much more beneficial than harmful.

      Carol

re .17 and all other replys...

We expect our younguns to be honest with us therefore, we are honest with them.
as was drilled into me and my 7 brothers and sisters... Honesty IS the best 
policy. there is always a right and wrong way to say something... there is 
alot to be said for tact....

my .02 worth...

rak

    .20 > We expect our younguns to be honest with us therefore, we are
    .20 > honest with them.
    
    I think parental honesty is even more strongly motivated by the
    desirability of parental credibility.  It seems unlikely that any 5
    year old would be taken in by the "asleep" evasion (or even a 3 year
    old), at least for long.  And, of course, they'll realize that a parent
    who will needlessly lie about one topic may well do so about another.
    In this case, it seems also to teach that unpleasant subjects should
    not be discussed, even inside the family.
    
    		- Bruce

    OK, I'll consider myself having been punished for lying to AJ, and
    promise (seriously) not to tell him that dead animals are sleeping on
    the road.  I guess it took someone else to show me that it was a wrong
    move on my part to use the term sleeping.  But as someone said, it IS
    kind of hard to explain that an animal is dead when there's no outward
    sign of injury.  I guess the other things that makes me want to scream
    is why and how people can hit an animal and just leave it for dead
    on the side of the road.  I've only hit an animal once, and turned
    around and got someone from the local animal hospital to come help the
    animal.  By the time I got there I was hysterical and in tears. 
    (emotions might have been enhanced by hormones too, I was pregnant with AJ)
    
    Sorry to offend with the reference to road pizza, guess it wasn't here,
    but as I think of it it's a term I've heard the local dog officer use
    several times.
    
    OK, so I'll start being honest with AJ, now if I could only make him
    stop saying "did somebody get dead in the ambulance" everytime he sees 
    an ambulance, or at least figure out an appropriate response.  
    
    Grief, what will these kids say next?!?!
    
    Lyn
    

    Recently there was a dead racoon next to the road which I saw each
    day as I drove home.  It was in an absolutely inaccessable place to
    the public next to an interstate. A day later a line road line painter
    had made a road line right over the animal. I couldn't believe it. I
    called the police and the racoon vanished within hours.  I felt badly
    that someone could be so disrespectful of a dead animal.  This animal
    was intact, not a 'road pizza' as some call it.

    Highway road lines are typicallly applied by automated spray heads on
    special trucks, which the driver just tries to steer along a constant
    position across the width of the road.  It seems highly unlikely that
    the driver saw the animal at all, and thus disrespect was probably not 
    involved.
    		- Bruce

    The animal was at the side of the road, and it was HAND PAINTED with an
    orange spray can, they had been marking drains for repair etc. with
    orange paint.  Of course it didn't matter to the coon, it was quite 
    dead... the attitude of the person who did it bothered me.