Fearing the Fear

I am recording this experience because I want to have it to reference later and because I believe it will become an important event in our family history. I certainly welcome all comments and thoughts about it but please understand that I'm not looking for sympathy or concerns and certainly not to make anyone nervous. I will first write the events as factually as I can and then, if it still feels appropriate, I'll share some of my emotions about what happened.

A bit of background: we live less than a half-mile from the elementary school Hazel attends. As such, we are asked to provide our own transportation since there are no set bus routes for homes that close to the school. For the first few weeks of school back in the fall, one of us walked Hazel to school in the morning. Once we were confident she knew the way and she said she was fine with it, she began walking by herself. She does occasionally meet up with one neighborhood kid or another on her way but there's nothing set for that and most days she walks alone as far as we know. This has been the situation since the middle of September.

Yesterday (April 8th) in the mid-morning, Jacob noticed that he had a phone message from the principal at the elementary school Hazel attends. The basic transcription of the message is this, "Hi, Mr. Wall. This is --not telling you the name--, the principal at the elementary school. I just wanted to touch base with you about something that was reported to me. If you could give me a call back please. There's no danger - I just need to run something by you."

Jacob and I had a brief discussion about what the phone call could potentially be about and decided that I would return the phone call.  Once I got on the phone with the principal, she recounted to me that she had received a phone call from "a concerned community member" who was concerned about Hazel walking to school by herself because she is so small and this "community member" was worried that she would be hit by a car, etc. The principal then asked if we could possibly walk her to school ourselves or set something else up with an older student who lived close by to walk with her. I remained silent until she stopped talking and then calmly informed her that Hazel had been walking herself to school for many months and we had never had a problem with it. I told her she did occasionally meet up with other kids in the area to walk but it wasn't something we had set up and we had no interest in setting anything formal or walking her ourselves - she was doing just fine as far as we were concerned. Thank you very much and have a good day.

After I hung up the phone, I told Jacob what he hadn't already heard or guessed, we talked about it for a while (I think it's safe to say we were both rather surprised that this was the subject of the phone call) and then put it out of our minds for the time being.

That night over dinner, we were all talking and Jacob asked Hazel if anyone had talked to her that day about how she walks to school by herself. Our thinking was that perhaps the teacher or even the principal may have said something to her. Here's the conversation to the best of my memory (it was only last night so hopefully it's still pretty fresh).

Hazel told us, "Oh yes, the lady in the car on the way to school talked to me about it."

"What lady in what car? Please tell us what happened."

"Well, I was walking to school this morning and right after I turned from Country Gables, a car pulled up next to me and said I shouldn't be walking by myself. But I told her I was allowed and then she told me I had to go home and get my parents. So I started like I was walking back home until the car left and then I turned around and went to school."

We were a bit speechless for a minute and then told Hazel that first, she was awesome, and second, she did exactly as we would like her to do, which was to go to school like we had told her to. Some further questions showed that she did not recognize the woman who talked to her or know her name and didn't recognize the car. We talked a bit more about how to handle some slight variants of the situation she dealt with and then let the discussion with Hazel drop.

Jacob and I are still discussing if we feel it's appropriate or necessary to call the principal back to relate to her Hazel's story. It might not matter to her at all but then again, she might want to be aware of the other actions of this "concerned community member".

So the basics of my feelings before I get into the deeper stuff:

I am completely, immensely, almost indescribably proud of my daughter. She handled a strange situation that we had perhaps (maybe?) vaguely touched on before with confidence and no worry. She apparently felt that she had to do something to appease this other adult so she did and then ignored the instruction this woman gave to her because it was different from what her parents had instructed her, which was to "go to school". The way she told us her story (since you weren't there and can't read my mind) was with no worry, no concern, just matter-of-fact "this is what happened to me this morning". Also recall that she didn't volunteer this incident. She apparently felt it didn't warrant conversation until we asked about it. Furthermore, in my opinion, a child who is going to recite off correct street names as she recounts the situation she was in is obviously fully capable of navigating her path to and from school.

We have not identified this other woman. From the way things unfolded, this woman either knows Hazel or asked her name with enough specificity that she reported her by name the principal. And this woman pulled up to a small child alone on the sidewalk and gave her instructions contrary to what her parents had given. No matter the reasons and intents behind it, I feel that what she did was very, very wrong. I will grant you there could have been some of the conversation lost in the almost 6-year-old translation. But knowing Hazel, there wasn't much. She is generally very precise when recounting things that she's going to bother recounting. Pretty much you either get the full story in glorious detail, or "I don't know - I can't remember". I understand the sentiment that it takes a community to raise and child and blahblahblah, but the community doesn't own the child. The child is the responsibility of the parent and no one needs to be undermining that relationship.

And now the deeper stuff:

I was disturbed, disconcerted, and really just freaking weirded out by what went down.

Not by the principal's phone call, though I did find it laughable that someone would bother complaining about something now, with six weeks left in the school year, that's been uneventfully going on for seven months. I also don't suppose to know what the principal actually feels about the situation - I don't know if she agreed with this woman or just felt duty-bound to pass the concern along or somewhere in between. I don't think it really matters to me what the principal feels. Not because I don't care but...I don't care. :) We have lots of disagreements with the school about Hazel and we've come to acceptable compromises on most issues. It's ironic that the one thing we've continued to push for that they won't give on is letting Hazel walk home by herself - currently someone from a designated list has to pick her up to release her from school.

I was disturbed by the idea of someone, who I may or may not know personally, approaching my daughter on the side of the road and trying to get her to do the opposite of what her parents asked her to do.

In a lot of situations, that basic concept would be downright criminal. If something bad had happened as a result of what this woman instructed Hazel to do, I'm pretty sure we could have found charges to press against her. We're not that kind of people but it's interesting to note. I talked to Jacob for a long while that night after the kids were asleep. I wanted him to shadow Hazel on her way to school the next day to see if this woman reappeared. But as we talked, he helped me see that was doing exactly what this woman wanted us to do, which is contrary to how we, as a family, had decided to handle Hazel getting to school. It was never Hazel's normal walk to school that worried me - it was this other woman and her potential actions who inadvertently (perhaps?) caused me to catch a bit of the worry she felt. So while I worried a bit more this morning than I normally would have, Hazel walked herself to school just like any other day. And wouldn't you know it - she made it there just fine, had a field trip to the park (that's another rant) that she declared "too long and I'll skip it next time", ate her french bread pizza for lunch and came home.

We've already shared this experience with a couple of local family members and been told to consider that the woman is just concerned and trying to be helpful. I will grant that as far as I can tell and as far as I feel in my heart when I pray about this whole thing, she IS almost certainly just concerned and trying to be helpful. But the underlying reason of WHY she is concerned about a young girl walking less than half a mile to her school is truly the worst part of this whole experience. I fear the fear in our society today. I am saddened by it. I am amazed at the way Satan can take the healthy concern for people around us and twist it with illogical and terrible thoughts to the point that people think it's so dangerous for a young child to walk familiar streets in the light of day without an adult present. The general "news" media (yes, those are sarcastic quotes) has certainly helped foster this attitude of fearing everyone and everything and every possibility. Coincidence? Hmm...

So as I've prayed to calm my worries about who this woman is and what she might ever try to do, I've been able to find the most peace in praying that her fear will be lessened. I pray for all of us that we can think a little more of our children and their capabilities and think a little more of our neighbors, who almost all certainly just want happiness and well-being for our children and their own.