Mother For Life

As many of you know, my children come home from school, and take care of themselves for the few hours I still work. We have been doing this since school started, and surprisingly it has gone well. There are little spats now and then, but we have those when I’m home too. There are many rules to this setting though. No phone calls, no friends over, doors locked, check up calls, etc. etc. So it gets very irritating for me when other children show up at my house knowing my kids cannot come out. They will then sit on my outside doorstep and simply wait for me to get home, calling out to me and asking if so and so can come out and play.

My problem with this is: where are their parents? Why does it seem like I am the only mother in town who doesn’t let my children run the town, especially when I am not home? One example of this is a friend of my daughter. Her mother works two jobs as a single parent, I give her credit she works like crazy. Yet while she is gone until late at night, she lets her two daughters run around with no supervision until all hours of the night.

I have let my daughter go to evening basketball games, gone to pick her up, and there is her friend and her sister just wandering around. I tell all the girls “let’s go”, and I walk them home. Of course five minutes after I leave, the girls are back out the door. At least my conscience is clear on that score though.

As a single mother, I understand having to work, trust me I do. There has got to be structure to that though.  I’ve written my rules here before. It hits home now again as the weather gets colder and colder here, and there are children running around. There are so many more dangers with the snow plows that can’t see them, the severe temperatures, the white outs, the icy lake so many think its safe to walk on. *Shivers*, it makes my stomach queasy just thinking on all the things that could go wrong.

Of course toss in the fact that in this small town there are at least ten registered sex offenders, and its a mothers nightmare come true. So I will stick with being known as the mean mom, the one who won’t let her children out to play. At least I will know they are safe and sound when I get home.