No, I Can't Relax. I'm a Parent

​Some may call me overprotective. I’m fine with that.

I am not going to be the parent that allows my children to ride their bikes down the road by themselves. I am not going to let my child go to sleepovers unless I know the family extremely well. I won’t run into the store and leave them in the car.

I don’t judge you if you do these things with your kids. They are yours. So don’t judge me either, because I have my reasons.

One of them is that when I was about ten years old I was almost kidnapped off of my grandmother’s front yard.

The day couldn’t have been more perfect. It was a summer day cliché, bright and sunny, blue sky, green grass, and a slight breeze. My father lived with my grandmother as my parents were divorced. My grandmother’s house was on a dead end street with only two houses beyond ours. The only cars that came during the day were the mailman at 11am and the ice cream truck at 4pm. We played in the road freely because it was so quiet. Our street was tucked away to the point that there was zero reason for anyone to stumble upon it unless they were purposefully looking for it. Houses lined one side of the street, about ten total, and the opposite side was a large open field that all children were welcome to play in. 5 other kids lived in the neighborhood. Our parents were friends and we all played together. My memory of the portion of my childhood spent living on that road, every other weekend and four weeks in the summer, is idyllic.

My father’s rules were simple: we had to stay within eyesight of the house. This meant we had boundary lines we knew not to cross. We also didn’t cross my father, so this was a non-issue. He normally was outside with us, sitting in a lawn chair in the sun drinking Budweiser from the six pack cooler he kept beside the chair. This day, however, he had gone inside to make some lunch and go to the bathroom.

My friend from down the street and the little girl next door were making bracelets out of string at the picnic table in the front yard, about twenty feet from the front door. The houses are close together, so we were in full view of the girl next door’s house as well. We saw a truck coming up the road, which was odd because pick up trucks did not come up our road. Ever. They turned around at the top and stopped in front of my house. The truck was shiny and red, with Vermont plates (we lived in NY), and three grown men were sitting in the cab.

“You girls selling anything?” One of them called out. The other two laughed.

“No.” I said back, uneasy. Something was wrong with this situation.

The man was about to say something else when my dad suddenly shot out of the front door like a cannon.

The driver stepped on the gas. My father was seething. Seriously, seething like a bull. He jumped in his car and squealed out after them (my grandmother was home, we were not unattended), which I later discovered was an attempt to get the license plate. I was scared he was either going to catch up with him or kill them. My dad was big, but these three guys looked huge, yet I’ve never seen my dad so mad. He returned ten minutes later, unsuccessful. He said they really must have stepped on it because he was flying to catch up with them.

He called the Sheriff’s office and went and got the parents next door. The Sheriff came and we all met at the kitchen table at the neighbor’s house to give as much as a description as we could. We were three little girls, so I don’t know how helpful we were, but the Sheriff said he was going to do his best to find them. This was an age before social media sharing, the internet, and Facebook, so it wasn’t like you could get the word out about something like this like you can today.

You may find this story uneventful, but I find it terrifying.

At the time I wasn’t scared, but the more I thought about it the further that creepy feeling traveled up my spine, that tingly sensation that is your instinct telling you to run, that something is drastically wrong. Now as a parent, this memory can give me nightmares. Because it didn’t matter we lived in a rural area. It didn’t matter we knew all of our neighbors. It didn’t matter we lived on a hidden dead end road with no traffic. Because there is no doubt in my mind these were bad men, and they found us.

The reason my dad was out of the house so fast? He was going to the bathroom standing up in front of the bathroom window and just happened to look outside. Shear freaking luck. He could have been making a sandwich, or watching five minutes of the noon news, or grabbing something from the other room and would have missed the entire thing. Who knows how the situation could have escalated.

Before the sanctiparents come to play, let me say that it was normal for kids to play outside unattended when I grew up. My dad was actually considered overprotective by other parents due to the boundaries he established for us and the fact that he was often outside with us anyway.

I realize in today’s very interconnected society, that we hear of bad things happening to children at a much higher frequency than if we looked statistically at incidents of kidnap. That doesn’t stop my heart from skipping a beat when I hear an Amber Alert. It doesn’t stop me from occasionally browsing the Sex Offender Registry to see if any predators are in the area.

I know I can’t prevent everything. No parent can. But I’m anxious enough as it is and I am going to do my damnedest to make sure the kids stay in my sights. They can be mad at me if they want for not letting them play outside alone, not letting them ride their bikes down the road, not attending sleepovers when I don’t know the parents, etc. Be mad.

Adults can criticize me for being overprotective or tell me I need to relax.

No, I can’t relax. I’m a parent.


Sarah Silvernail is a mother of 2, wife, former teacher, writer, reader, waitress, bartender, and blogger at Babies, Books, and Bistros, where she blogs about life as a mom, her love of books and education, as well as life in the restaurant industry. Her adventures can also be followed on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter