Dangerous Things: Part 2

 

As promised, this is a continuation of last week's post.

 

The first anyone knew that AJ had left the school was when he showed up on his grandmother's doorstep. This was a good three-quarters of an hour before she was due to go and collect him as normal, so you can imagine her surprise.

 

The facts, as far as I know them are these:

 

At some point during school on a Wednesday, AJ and one of his pals had reached the conclusion that the after-school activity that they both did had been cancelled.

 

I'm still not totally sure why they didn't check, but it was, at this point, an hour before he was due to be collected and he didn't fancy waiting around, so he walked home. Or rather, back to his grandparents' house.

 

If you ask me to think rationally about it, I honestly can't come up with a reason for being as freaked out as I was. It's a journey of less than a mile, most of which was with friends and their parents.

 

He passes the homes of several friends of both his and his mother's, he has good road sense, good 'stranger-danger' sense and he knows the route – and several shortcuts – backwards.

 

According to my mum, I was walking similar distances across similar terrain when I was about the same age.

 

But rational doesn't always come into it with one's children, so on a 1-10 scale of freaked-outness, I think I peaked in the mid-thirties when I got the phone call about what he'd done. What the hell was he thinking?!

 

How did he get out of the school unaccompanied and unchallenged? Why didn't he check the room he was supposed to go to? And seriously, what the HELL was he thinking?

 

I am very, very glad that I was in work and had a chance to cool down before I saw him that evening.

 

 

I'm completely certain that I would have ranted and raved and threatened and screamed blue murder. There would have been hand-waving and college-length lectures about not scaring the bejesus out of your parents and grandparents like that.

 

There is a large part of me that is, and always will be, terrified for my kids. There are a million and one different things in this world that can hurt them, scare them and break their little hearts, and it is all I can do not to stand guard in front of them 24 hours a day.

 

And where as seven years old is still, from where I'm sitting, too young for the level of independence that I think AJ would like sometimes (this is a kid who has pondered aloud which of my DVDs he wants me to let him take with him when he moves out), the little dangerous things, the uncommon knowledge and skills are how they build their own armour.

 

That evening, we got to have a talk.

 

AJ told me about the route he took, who he was with, what his thought process was and the good and bad about what he'd done. We talked about how he could have done that better, and about what he should have done instead.

 

Next time he'll check the activities room and have the school secretary call someone, but he'll be confident in the knowledge that if he needs to walk home again, he knows how.

 

And for my part, it's one less thing to give me an early heart attack.

 

John Madden is a freelance designer, writer and dad from Dublin. You can find him on Twitter as @johnmadden78.