“Apparently some changes take longer than you thought,” he said as he held the door open for me to leave. He was right. A scathing heartbreak had started these bad habits, but if I didn’t stop them now, I would only continue pushing love out of my life.
Just because I was questioning myself, didn’t justify my questioning him. It was time for me to go into hiding. I began a hiatus from dating that would last one year. I traveled alone. I slept alone. I polled girlfriends who kept tabs on their other halves. I saw a therapist. I forgave my ex-husband. I forgave myself. I did all of this to find the answer to the one question Philip asked me the last time we spoke: What was I looking for?
I was looking for a way out of a relationship I no longer wanted to be in. Whether it was because I was unhappy, or treated badly or simply no longer in love, I just couldn’t walk away. My own instincts were the very thing I trusted the least. It was as if I needed proof to confirm what I already knew, that I no longer wanted to be with the man I had chosen.
That night, almost a decade ago, when I sat clutching pages, waiting for my ex-husband to come home, I didn’t know what I would say to him. But I believed that if he could tell me the truth, no matter what it was, I would forgive him. I had no idea how much strength it takes to look at someone that wants to be with you and tell them you want out. Andrew wasn’t strong enough to tell me. I wasn’t strong enough to tell Philip.I reached out to Skenazy early this year through a Facebook message, and she got back to me right away, saying she was happy to talk.
A former columnist for the New York Daily News and New York Sun, she was launched into the national spotlight in 2008 when she wrote a column about her decision to let her 9-year-old son take the subway by himself. The column resulted in a flood of both outrage and admiration, and spurred Skenazy to found the Free Range Kids movement, a movement dedicated to, in Skenazy’s words, “fighting the belief that our kids are in constant danger.”
As a mother who has often felt as though my kids are in constant danger, I wasn’t sure what to expect of her, if I was going to end up talking to a fringe “expert” who would tell me to forgo seat belts and bike helmets and vaccines to help my kids toughen up. Instead, Skenazy comes across as calm, direct and adamant in her ideas.
I asked if I could start by telling her a little about my story, but I’d hardly finished the sentence when she interrupted. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Instead, let me tell you your story.” Apparently, she knew it by heart. “Just let me close the office door first because my husband’s heard this spiel a million times. OK, so, you were running errands with your kid when you decided to leave her in the car for a couple minutes while you ran into a store. The surrounding conditions were perfectly safe, mild weather and such, but when you came out, you found yourself blocked in by a cop car, being yelled at by a nosy, angry onlooker, being accused of child neglect or endangering your chid. Is that about right?” Skenazy’s heard it all before. But her demeanor suggested the outrage such charges elicited in her hadn’t dissipated much over the years since, in response to her son’s subway ride, news outlets dubbed her “the worst mom in America.”
We talked for about an hour, and what stuck with me and surprised me most was not her sympathy, but her certainty, her utter lack of equivocation or doubt. “Listen,” she said at one point. “Let’s put aside for the moment that by far, the most dangerous thing you did to your child that day was put him in a car and drive someplace with him. About 300 children are injured in traffic accidents every day — and about two die. That’s a real risk. So if you truly wanted to protect your kid, you’d never drive anywhere with him. But let’s put that aside. So you take him, and you get to the store where you need to run in for a minute and you’re faced with a decision. Now, people will say you committed a crime because you put your kid ‘at risk.’ But the truth is, there’s some risk to either decision you make.” She stopped at this point to emphasize, as she does in much of her analysis, how shockingly rare the abduction or injury of children in non-moving, non-overheated vehicles really is. For example, she insists that statistically speaking, it would likely take 750,000 years for a child left alone in a public space to be snatched by a stranger. “So there is some risk to leaving your kid in a car,” she argues. It might not be statistically meaningful but it’s not nonexistent. The problem is,” she goes on, “there’s some risk to every choice you make. So, say you take the kid inside with you. There’s some risk you’ll both be hit by a crazy driver in the parking lot. There’s some risk someone in the store will go on a shooting spree and shoot your kid. There’s some risk he’ll slip on the ice on the sidewalk outside the store and fracture his skull. There’s some risk no matter what you do. So why is one choice illegal and one is OK? Could it be because the one choice inconveniences you, makes your life a little harder, makes parenting a little harder, gives you a little less time or energy than you would have otherwise had?”
Later on in the conversation, Skenazy boils it down to this. “There’s been this huge cultural shift. We now live in a society where most people believe a child can not be out of your sight for one second, where people think children need constant, total adult supervision. This shift is not rooted in fact. It’s not rooted in any true change. It’s imaginary. It’s rooted in irrational fear.”
The problem is, I understand irrational fear. In fact, irrational fear and I are old friends. Some things seem dangerous and others don’t, and often, it has little to do with statistics or data. No matter how many people reassure me that flying is the safest form of travel, so much safer than driving, I will always be more nervous at 30,000 feet than en route to the airport. Likewise, it won’t matter how many statistics or how much analysis on low crime rates or the importance of fostering independence Skenazy or people like her spout; for many parents at this moment in our culture, leaving kids unsupervised just doesn’t feel safe. Anything could happen, is a common refrain voiced by such parents. And I know what they mean. We’ve seen the television movies about abducted children. We’ve heard the heart-rending stories of kids injured in carjackings, or forgotten in sweltering cars. And once you imagine something, imagine what it must have been like for that parent or child who suffered it, it’s not a great leap to imagine it happening to you or your child, and then, if you’re like most parents, you will do anything in your power to prevent it. It’s not a matter of likelihood or statistical significance, but the terrible power of our imagination.
That was then. I don’t consider myself reformed but in remission. When I feel the boiling, the building up, the need to peek or prod — I examine myself instead. These days, I’ll leave when I know that someone is not what I want or need. I don’t have to wait for the findings of a doubt-fueled, late-night ransack to confirm it.
Jessica Ciencin Henriquez is a New York City based freelance writer and author of the novel, "Lies I've Told My Therapist." You can follow her on twitter @TheWriterJess.
“Confront him then,” she suggested.
“Apparently some changes take longer than you thought,” he said as he held the door open for me to leave. He was right. A scathing heartbreak had started these bad habits, but if I didn’t stop them now, I would only continue pushing love out of my life.
Just because I was questioning myself, didn’t justify my questioning him. It was time for me to go into hiding. I began a hiatus from dating that would last one year. I traveled alone. I slept alone. I polled girlfriends who kept tabs on their other halves. I saw a therapist. I forgave my ex-husband. I forgave myself. I did all of this to find the answer to the one question Philip asked me the last time we spoke: What was I looking for?
I was looking for a way out of a relationship I no longer wanted to be in. Whether it was because I was unhappy, or treated badly or simply no longer in love, I just couldn’t walk away. My own instincts were the very thing I trusted the least. It was as if I needed proof to confirm what I already knew, that I no longer wanted to be with the man I had chosen.
That night, almost a decade ago, when I sat clutching pages, waiting for my ex-husband to come home, I didn’t know what I would say to him. But I believed that if he could tell me the truth, no matter what it was, I would forgive him. I had no idea how much strength it takes to look at someone that wants to be with you and tell them you want out. Andrew wasn’t strong enough to tell me. I wasn’t strong enough to tell Philip.I reached out to Skenazy early this year through a Facebook message, and she got back to me right away, saying she was happy to talk.
A former columnist for the New York Daily News and New York Sun, she was launched into the national spotlight in 2008 when she wrote a column about her decision to let her 9-year-old son take the subway by himself. The column resulted in a flood of both outrage and admiration, and spurred Skenazy to found the Free Range Kids movement, a movement dedicated to, in Skenazy’s words, “fighting the belief that our kids are in constant danger.”
As a mother who has often felt as though my kids are in constant danger, I wasn’t sure what to expect of her, if I was going to end up talking to a fringe “expert” who would tell me to forgo seat belts and bike helmets and vaccines to help my kids toughen up. Instead, Skenazy comes across as calm, direct and adamant in her ideas.
I asked if I could start by telling her a little about my story, but I’d hardly finished the sentence when she interrupted. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Instead, let me tell you your story.” Apparently, she knew it by heart. “Just let me close the office door first because my husband’s heard this spiel a million times. OK, so, you were running errands with your kid when you decided to leave her in the car for a couple minutes while you ran into a store. The surrounding conditions were perfectly safe, mild weather and such, but when you came out, you found yourself blocked in by a cop car, being yelled at by a nosy, angry onlooker, being accused of child neglect or endangering your chid. Is that about right?” Skenazy’s heard it all before. But her demeanor suggested the outrage such charges elicited in her hadn’t dissipated much over the years since, in response to her son’s subway ride, news outlets dubbed her “the worst mom in America.”
We talked for about an hour, and what stuck with me and surprised me most was not her sympathy, but her certainty, her utter lack of equivocation or doubt. “Listen,” she said at one point. “Let’s put aside for the moment that by far, the most dangerous thing you did to your child that day was put him in a car and drive someplace with him. About 300 children are injured in traffic accidents every day — and about two die. That’s a real risk. So if you truly wanted to protect your kid, you’d never drive anywhere with him. But let’s put that aside. So you take him, and you get to the store where you need to run in for a minute and you’re faced with a decision. Now, people will say you committed a crime because you put your kid ‘at risk.’ But the truth is, there’s some risk to either decision you make.” She stopped at this point to emphasize, as she does in much of her analysis, how shockingly rare the abduction or injury of children in non-moving, non-overheated vehicles really is. For example, she insists that statistically speaking, it would likely take 750,000 years for a child left alone in a public space to be snatched by a stranger. “So there is some risk to leaving your kid in a car,” she argues. It might not be statistically meaningful but it’s not nonexistent. The problem is,” she goes on, “there’s some risk to every choice you make. So, say you take the kid inside with you. There’s some risk you’ll both be hit by a crazy driver in the parking lot. There’s some risk someone in the store will go on a shooting spree and shoot your kid. There’s some risk he’ll slip on the ice on the sidewalk outside the store and fracture his skull. There’s some risk no matter what you do. So why is one choice illegal and one is OK? Could it be because the one choice inconveniences you, makes your life a little harder, makes parenting a little harder, gives you a little less time or energy than you would have otherwise had?”
Later on in the conversation, Skenazy boils it down to this. “There’s been this huge cultural shift. We now live in a society where most people believe a child can not be out of your sight for one second, where people think children need constant, total adult supervision. This shift is not rooted in fact. It’s not rooted in any true change. It’s imaginary. It’s rooted in irrational fear.”
The problem is, I understand irrational fear. In fact, irrational fear and I are old friends. Some things seem dangerous and others don’t, and often, it has little to do with statistics or data. No matter how many people reassure me that flying is the safest form of travel, so much safer than driving, I will always be more nervous at 30,000 feet than en route to the airport. Likewise, it won’t matter how many statistics or how much analysis on low crime rates or the importance of fostering independence Skenazy or people like her spout; for many parents at this moment in our culture, leaving kids unsupervised just doesn’t feel safe. Anything could happen, is a common refrain voiced by such parents. And I know what they mean. We’ve seen the television movies about abducted children. We’ve heard the heart-rending stories of kids injured in carjackings, or forgotten in sweltering cars. And once you imagine something, imagine what it must have been like for that parent or child who suffered it, it’s not a great leap to imagine it happening to you or your child, and then, if you’re like most parents, you will do anything in your power to prevent it. It’s not a matter of likelihood or statistical significance, but the terrible power of our imagination.
That was then. I don’t consider myself reformed but in remission. When I feel the boiling, the building up, the need to peek or prod — I examine myself instead. These days, I’ll leave when I know that someone is not what I want or need. I don’t have to wait for the findings of a doubt-fueled, late-night ransack to confirm it.
Jessica Ciencin Henriquez is a New York City based freelance writer and author of the novel, "Lies I've Told My Therapist." You can follow her on twitter @TheWriterJess.
“Confront him then,” she suggested.
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