Life is a Choking Hazard
By Tiffany Lewis

My children are not orphans, but sometimes you just might wonder.

At the end of a long afternoon at the park, we stroll home, brown and dusty.  Jackson, my oldest, carries a handful of sticks, which he likes to gnaw on in the absence of fruit snacks.  Addison, the younger, is shoeless, sometimes pants-less, and his mouth is rimmed with sand.

Most kids at the park play on the plastic playscape.  My sons head straight for the dirt, the sand, and the sticks.  Sometimes they roll in it.  Often they eat it.  I allow this because I have a testimony of dirt.  When I was in second grade, my best friend and I snacked on grass stew at recess.  In fourth grade I munched on napkins with ketchup and mustard.  These are character-building experiences.

That said, laid-back parenting has not come easy for me.  When Jackson was born, I suddenly turned into this tense, nervous woman.  But then one day I had an epiphany.

When Jackson was 18 months, I took him to the doctor for his routine checkup.  He was munching on raisins when the pediatrician walked into the room.  “Now, remember,” she said, “raisins are still a choking hazard.”

I mulled her warning over and over in my mind.  Something about it bothered me, like the way I get patiently annoyed when strangers chide me for letting my son chew on car keys.  Finally my mind landed upon this thought: “Life is a choking hazard.”  In the very act of parenting, we are bringing our children into a world of obstacles and pain, and we simply can’t protect them every step of the way.

As a parent, it’s easy to be seized with fear.  It begins before your baby is even born, when you feel those funny aches and pains.  Then the kicking comes, and stops, and you worry again.  You worry about the physical abnormalities and the mental limitations.

Then the baby arrives and you have a whole new set of fears.  Things that had happy associations in your life become evil — things like mangoes, honey, and the sun, for goodness’ sake.  When your child begins to move, you fret over stray coins, the cleaner you used on the carpet, and the fact that your child is sucking on the bottom of your shoe.  Then they begin to walk and you really wish someone would invent a giant plastic hamster ball for toddlers, preferably well padded.

I’ve done my fair share of worrying, staying up at night thinking about my children’s future, going all the way from falling down the stairs to that first bully on the playground.  I worry about swear words and pornography and hoodlum kids with craggy teeth and sagging jeans.  My son isn’t even potty trained, but I’ve given myself stomach cramps picturing his entire future.

I’ve stopped reading parenting books because they hit you with every possible danger your child could encounter.  Then they turn around and tell you to just relax and take things one day at a time (but don’t forget to pad the faucet head and install that stove guard).

Last summer, while visiting my parents in Texas, my son stuck his hand in a hornet’s nest at the park.  I had read all the parenting books on first aid, so like a good parent, I screamed, panicked, and froze, which of course did wonders for his state of mind.  Then I picked him up and ran.  Images from the movie My Girl kept playing through my head as I carried my son to the car.  My mom called a doctor and we drove circles around the hospital, waiting for any signs of allergy.  An hour later he was unscathed, happily licking a chocolate ice cream cone.

I learned a valuable lesson from this.  It does very little good to worry yourself sick with preemptive fear.  You can protect your child from the sun, the sidewalk, the zooming cars, and the mosquitoes by keeping him inside the shelter of your home.  He’ll still find a way to get hurt.  Our living room is so padded and childproof it looks like a bounce house, but my kids still manage to impale themselves, on each other’s fingers, once a day.  You can lock and seal every cabinet, but your wise son will still find the bathroom cleaner, aim it directly at his eye, and spray.  And you can plan perfectly child-friendly birthday parties and still end up in the emergency room when your son falls off a chair and splits his lip on the corner of the stairs.  (At this point you can wish really hard you had girls, who don’t seem to get hurt nearly as often.)

When these calamities come your way, you do as any rational parent would do.  You panic, you scream, you figure it out.  You and your child both get a little wiser.

There was a time, long ago, when children would roam the neighborhood all day long, barefoot, wearing Popsicle-stained shirts and riding Big Wheels.  I watch the kids these days sporting mini Abercrombie and driving mini motorized Hummers to a park that’s not a block from their house.  They check in with their mom every five minutes via walkie-talkie and carry 100% Real Fruit Juice boxes.  They’re told to be careful and for heaven’s sake, don’t get DIRTY!

I wonder what this future generation will be like after having grown up in a speck-free bubble.  They really are in the hamster’s ball, and someday they’ll have to break out and confront a very messy, dirty world.  What then?

Danger is real, and so is fear.  But somewhere along the way there has to be a little faith.  Faith that our kids’ lives will play out the way they’re supposed to.  And faith that, just as when Christ came to the Americas, there are angels both administering to and protecting our children, not just from physical harm, but from a future filled with adversity.  Our Father in Heaven loves his children, more than even we hovering parents, and he is mindful of them.  And I believe he circles them, his little ones, with his own ring of fire.

The future, with all its bugs and band-aids, bullies and bruises, is still a wonderful, precious thing.

So gate the stairs and lock the cupboards.  Then let your children run barefoot in the grass. And eat that handful of sand.  Life can taste delicious.