My baby laughed today!! She has the sweetest chuckle and gurly (is that a word?) and wonderful. It is hard to think anything is bad in the world when you hear it.
And then you find out your husband doesn't know where your 8 year old is either. The girls and I had come home from an outing and J was no where in sight. I assumed he was with hubby...who assumed he was outside playing. An hour later we talked to discover he was not outside where we could see him. Thankfully hubby tracked him down. He was at a neighborhood kids house and he is OK. But is a disconcerting feeling not knowing where he was. Worrisome. I didn't have any premonitions that anything was really wrong. I hope that I would if there was something really amiss. I'm just the kind of person who needs to know where her 4 kids are at all times. Kindergarten was a big adjustment for me because I didn't know exactly what my kid did for hours at a time. Its just the way I am.
Hubby was raised a bit differently. He remembers running all over the neighborhood as a kid and his Mother not knowing where he was exactly. I had to tell my Mother where I was going. He agrees with me now saying the now almost classic phrase "times are different now" But are they? Because he agreed with me, I didn't say anything at the time. I have been thinking about it though. I think the biggest thing that is different is that people talk about things more then they used to. I think kids where stolen 20-30 years ago. They were sexually abused. They saw things they shouldn't have. They drank and did drugs. Had sex earlier then they maybe should have. Those things happend then. The big difference now is we talk about it more. Bringing an awareness that people perhaps just didnt think about when they were raising their kids.
The kid whose house J ran off to is 5 years older then he is. I gotta ask why this kid who is in Jr. High wants to play with my second grader. Maybe its innocent. Maybe he just really enjoys J's wild ideas and exuberant attitude. This kid has hung around in my yard quite a bit. I'm not going to go into details here in this public forum....but basically I'm OK with him playing outside where I can see them. My kids are not going to his house. My hubby has argued that he is a nice kid....and I hope he is. The thing is, bad guys lots of times ARE nice. Maybe I've watched to much Oprah and read to much on the internet. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut. The age difference is to big. I don't know the family. It just isn't going to happen. And J's grounded for another week.
With all this, I just remind myself, My baby laughed today!
