Teaching children about danger

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Author Message   Spry Citizen Username: Spry Post Number: 16 Registered: 7-2003 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2003 - 3:48 pm:        Advice and/or feedback needed and please -- be kind. I live on one of the hilly blocks between Ridgewood and Wyoming. The hill climbs most steeply in the first 50 or so feet travelling up Ridgewood toward Wyoming - so steep that some neighbors reported having to get front wheel drive to make it up the hill in the winter months. Anyway ... when I first moved to the block, I learned that one of the homes had a ramp because a child in the house had had a near fatal accident, some years back, in which he lost control of his bicycle and was hit by a car on Ridgewood Avenue. The upshot of the accident was that he was wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. Yesterday afternoon, our street had a block party, on the flat part of the block (about 3/4 of the way up to Wyoming). A few hours in, when the cupcakes, cookies and other desserts started to kick in, a group of children, ages 3 to 7, started to ride various sorts of bicycles (ranging from fancy big-wheelers to my pre-schoolers' Toys R Us bikes with training wheels) down the hill. I happened to be near the point on Ridgewood where the big drop is located. I told one of the children that he should not go any further. When he and a few others that caught up to him asked me why, I told them that the hill was so steep at that point, they might lose control of their bikes and go into Ridgewood Avenue. I also mentioned the boy on our block who had been hit by the car on Ridgewood after a bicycle accident. A little while later, the mother of the boy whom I stopped thanked me profusely. Another mother, whose boys lived near the bottom of the street, near Ridgewood, berated me for "scaring the children." She asked me what I had said to them, as they were talking about a "boy in a wheelchair." Did I do wrong? How should I have expressed all of this better? I don't want to traumatize my children, or others, but that drop off, into Ridgewood, is very scary!   optimyst Citizen Username: Optimyst Post Number: 58 Registered: 6-2001 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2003 - 4:20 pm:        I believe you were right to warn the kids that is was dangerous to go further, pointing out that they might not be able to stop before running into Ridgewood Road. Some parents take it that you are reprimanding their child, which in effect means you are saying that they are neglectful. I once had 2 small children cut across all the front yards on my block to get to their playmates house on the corner. They were close to the house, so when I drove down my driveway, all of a sudden they appeared by my bushes! Needless to say, I would not have seen them and almost hit them .. I approached the mother in a calm way and told her my fears and she yelled at me like I was accusing her of being a bad mother. Because this issue was important to me, I stuck with it and in time she knew I had only the best interests of all at heart. My experience with children, my own 2 and countless others, is that the more informed they are, the better .... A child who is afraid of flying down the road into a car is better than a dead child any day ... Just remember your motive for giving the info.. To inform or to scare?   shoshannah Citizen Username: Shoshannah Post Number: 212 Registered: 7-2002 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2003 - 4:22 pm:        Not to mention that a few years ago, on upper Elm St. in Millburn, a young mother was crushed under the wheel of her own minivan rolling backward down the hill as her children and childrens' friends looked on in horror.   gretchen Citizen Username: Gretchen Post Number: 55 Registered: 8-2001 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2003 - 5:56 pm:        Personally, I believe in giving children warnings about danger, but not scaring them with spelling out specific scenarios of what horrible things might happen. For example, I say, "watch out, this isn't a safe place to jump around because that table is glass and has sharp corners" not "the corner of that table could cut your head open and you'll be bleeding all over the place and end up getting stitches in the emergency room". My kids are in that age range and I think I would have appreciated the warning but not really welcomed the imagery of ending up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.   shh Citizen Username: Shh Post Number: 640 Registered: 5-2001 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2003 - 9:49 pm:        I agree with Gretchen. I don't think I would have mentioned the specific child who had been injured, just out of sensitivity to the family's privacy and feelings. At times—depending on the children involved and my relationship with them or their parents— I might not even include them in my warning but rather direct it at my own children, and then when the other kids inevitably ask why my kids can't do something, explain it further. I'm pretty cautious with my kids and I've learned not all parents are, or they are in a different way.   3mom Citizen Username: 3mom Post Number: 103 Registered: 5-2001 Posted on Monday, September 8, 2003 - 11:57 pm:        My children don't seem to understand the gravity of warnings unless I am explicit about possible outcomes. But I would not be so explicit with other people's children because, as a number of people have mentioned, other parents' might take issue. I do think we all have a responsibility to keep every child we see as safe as possible though, and I am surprised that your neighbor would object to your attempt to protect her kid. As a parent of kids who are sometimes reckless, I am grateful for every person who tries to contribute to their survival!   Jackie Day Citizen Username: Zoesky1 Post Number: 106 Registered: 6-2003 Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - 9:17 pm:        I would probably have handled it like Gretchen, Shh, and 3Mom. My friends and I regularly speak up for each others' kids -- if we see one doing something dangerous, we definitely speak out to them whether their mom is present or not. But even among good friends we keep it pretty straightforward, because there's no way to know what would disturb a kid later, what stage of understanding a kid is at, what bad dreams they'd have, etc. We keep it at "stop! that's not safe..you could get a really bad boo-boo...etc" (our kids are preschool-age, so "really bad boo-boo" still sounds pretty bad to them). Obviously older kids are going to have a better idea of what you're talking about. I think any kid beyond 6 or 7 years old would know you're referring to cars hitting them, and might crave more details. But still, maybe it would be best to halt the dangerous behavior with a simple warning -- usually, any adult's warning is enough to stop the activity -- and let the parents fill in the details later, if they want to. I know this is a fine line to walk, and I'm sure it only gets trickier as kids get older and get into more potentially risky activities.   Spry Citizen Username: Spry Post Number: 17 Registered: 7-2003 Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2003 - 11:16 am:        Thanks, everyone, for your input, which has been very useful for me! Some other thoughts: I wanted everyone to know that the family whose son was permanently injured (wheelchair bound) by his accident moved from our street about a year ago. (The son is now in college, I should add.) Of course, it was not his, or his family's, fault that he was hit by a car ..... Also, shouldn't the parents of the children at the block party riding down our steep block have been supervising them more closely? The mother who thanked me for stopping her son felt as much; the mother who was angry with me usually does keep a sharp eye on her sons, so I feel her reaction may also have been provoked by a bit of guilt for letting them get so far away. (Her sons had the fastest bikes, too!). Still, I hear everyone's advice that my degree of specificity may have been overkill and ill-advised for the age group to whom I was speaking. With my own children (age 4), I tend to be extremely specific about everything, so I was just treating others as I would my own. So far, my little ones are not manifesting any negative effects from this, but perhaps time will prove this approach wrong!