We Don't Live In Yesteryear

9-Year-Old Foils Would Be Car Jacker

As one mother found out, leaving your kids, all 4 of them, in a car while you run in for a drink isn't the best idea. Many people are calling those of us who feel the mother was in the wrong, too harsh. How could she be expected to carry all of those children, ages 9, 3, 19 months, and 4 months, into the store for just a drink? Back in the day, parents left their children in the cars all the time. In answer to the first question, I don't expect her to take all of her children into the store for a drink, I expect her to go through a drive thru like the rest of us. As for the 2nd thought, we don't live back in the day.

Almost everyday, I hear of one person or another talking of yesteryear, a time when parents weren't afraid to let their children play alone outside. Or run into a store and leave their kids in the car. Some feel parents today are overprotective, our children are becoming wimps. But gone are the days when others would look out for your children. We live in a time where people stand around and watch a young woman being ganged raped outside of a school. We live in a time when some idiot tries to jack a car with 4 children inside of it. This little boy was brave, but he shouldn't have needed to be. He shouldn't have been held responsible for the safety of his baby brothers.

I don't subscribe to the theory that the mother should be tarred and feather, or the equivalent of being processed through Child Services. It was a bad decision, and hopefully she will learn from it. I am not without guilt. I have left my son in the car while I used a port a potty at a park. I left him in the car in the pouring rain while I had to run through a flooded parking lot to ask a gas attendant to turn on a pump. Both instances where I felt he was safer in the car, both instances where I was panic stricken the entire time that something was going to happen to my kid. And maybe I am overly cautious, but for all of the children who are safely sitting in the vehicle when the parent returns, there are the ones who aren't. The ones who have accidentally pulled the emergency brake and rolled the car into traffic. The babies found sitting on the side of the road where the car jackers tossed them once they were discovered in the back seat. The children who are never found. Because even if the ratio is 150 to 1, the ratio means nothing if your child is the one.