(no subject)

[percival]

My mother was over-protective, I'm trying not to be, and I find it deeply, deeply scary. My daughter (21 months) is relatively easy to control, so I've started to let her out of the buggy and walk beside me on the house-side of the pavement. I make her take my hand once we start to get close to crossings, and I will put her back in the buggy if she keeps trying to run away.

When going from A to B in a larger shop, I now tend to let her walk, following closely on her heels. She learns and discovers a lot this way, how floors feel, what signs look like, what grates are, and we enjoy it. But oh the horror of overdoing it. When a friendly lady offers to watch the baby while I get another coffee at the coffee shop, do I trust or do I mistrust? There's just so much that can go wrong, and she is so small, and I'm trying so hard to be different from my mother, who thinks People are out to Get You, that I'm likely to err on the lax side.

And if something happens, it's all my fault, and I will never be able to forgive myself.

The abducted three-year-old haunts me.

ETA: Having been over to Ask Moxie, it's definitely time to break out that harness again. She's far too fond of a little game of "catch me if you can" sometimes ...

Comments

[perceval.livejournal.com]

See, the thing about babies is that nobody tells you about the sheer unending worry. If it's not reins, it's sleep, or food. I already dread her first night out ;)

Also, everybody has their own style and learning curve. As I said in my post, mine is rather lax, and sometimes I get an impulse to reconsider. Thankfully, this time, it was a general sense of it not feeling quite right, but in general, men tend to be a bit less protective of kids than women.