Graceful Parenting in Austin

I have seriously considered the life of a Safest Parent in Town. For one thing, I have the skills. I can be very goal-driven and task-oriented and that combined with basic Internet skills can lead to a wealth of information about the dangers around every corner. Then there are my organizing skills, writing skills and affinity for every day household engineering, which would enable me to create a safety and procedure manual for my house, in three bound volumes, with safety classes and degree programs to match.

The second good reason for being the Safest Parent in Town is the comfort that it provides. If I did everything I possibly could to ensure my kids’ safety, then I would almost guarantee that nothing would happen to them. There are extra, added bonus comforts of being the least likely to get the evil eye in a public place for doing something someone else believes is unsafe and the release of all guilt in the case that something happened anyway, because no one could question that absolutely every preventive measure had been taken.

I was especially tempted by this life when I lost my daughter Grace. I knew if I had been perfectly safe during my pregnancy, I wouldn’t have lost her. In the balance I had found between perfectly-safe and on-the-edge-of-disaster, I had paid the ultimate price for not being safe enough. So the life of the Safest Parent in Town was very tempting.

But I had made a conscious to not have the Safest Pregnancy Ever and while it seemed like a bad choice in hindsight, I kept coming back to the reasons why I made that decision.

There is a cost to being the Safest Parent in Town. It would change how I listen to the news, which books I read and what I talk about with my friends. I would have filters constantly searching for the sad and the dangerous and my interactions with my kids would be dominated by limits and rules. When I think about that kind of life and what I would feel like at the end of the day, I think I would feel like “Wow, we sure were lucky to survive!” and where is the joy in that?

For all the time I would spend researching the latest danger on the Internet, I could have been listening to Noel tell a story. For all the time I spend installing the refrigerator and oven locks, I could have been reading to Baby Girl. And more important than the time and energy it takes to be the Safest Parent in Town, I think it comes with underlying assumption that the dangers in the world are more important that the joys of the world and I don’t want to pass that along to my kids. When my kids wake up in the morning, I want them to listen to the birds sing and notice the trees blooming and look forward to the possibilities that the day brings, instead of being afraid of what might happen.

So I will do my homework and I’ll be careful. I’ll read some books, talk to my pediatrician and listen to the news, keeping an eye out for the most important safety tips, the top 5 or so from each source. But I won’t search, hunt and investigate trying to build a comprehensive list of things to be worried about. I want to leave some time and energy for listening to the birds sing and noticing the trees bloom and that will be safe enough.