An open letter …
On preparing your children for life
Distance spares you. Ten days ago, when a 24-storey block of public housing in West London blazed, we deplored the lives lost, we wrung our hands and we were thankful. Thankful to be far-removed from the toxic fumes of flammable cladding, from the blistering heat of an insufficient evacuation plan. This time tragedy did not touch us, but it served as a warning notice. Adriana Ramirez was at work, cleaning offices at night, when she heard her apartment building was alight. As she raced toward home she received a call from her 12-year-old daughter, Jessica, screaming from a smokechoked stairwell for her mother.
I left my 12-year-old son home alone the other day for a couple of hours, as I do increasingly casually. He is almost 13, I tell myself, old enough. He knows the drill. But as I went to kiss him goodbye, I thought of Jessica, of whom, at the time of going to print, there has been no word since that terrible call. You know what to do if there’s a fire, don’t you, I asked. Yes, he said confidently. I ring you. No, before that, I said. What’s the first thing you should do? Call 111, he took a stab. No, even before that. Put it out, he offered, more tentative now. No, honey, I said, if there’s a fire, you get out.
Have I adequately prepared him? Jessica’s mother probably thought she had, but can you ever fully equip your child for what life may throw at them? I took my son to swimming lessons, made sure he ate his vegetables, that he cleaned his teeth. But as he leaves my side, comes out from under my wing, as he hovers, no longer one thing, not yet the next, in a state of transition, of flux, how do I protect him? Scrolling through my contacts recently, searching for the number of one of the local teenage girlrls we employl whenh we go out at night, it occurred to me that soon he’ll be at high school with so ome of thes girls, that it will likely be too sh hameful to be babysat by one of his pe eers.
Apprehensively, I have applauded his burgeoning independence. Armed with his s Ho card and phone, he is a man with his own means. However r, as he forges his own way, arrang ges his own social life, he comes into contact with those I don’t know; older kids, adults. Last month there was a message from the police in the school newsletter, it stressed that while it is important to discuss stranger danger with your children, it’s more important to focus on how they should react to unwanted behaviour; because it may well be a stranger who helps them if they are ever in danger, and, because, more children are harmed by someone they know than someone they don’t.d’ SSo howh ddo I teachh himh whoho he can trust, when I don’t know who he can? How ddo I teach him to expect the best in and of people, and yet to be wary, because bad shit does happen? At a hip-hop gig the other nigght (yes, we were the ldest by a country mile) I was onn the deck, seeking eprieve from the noise, when I bbecame aware of something going on behind me. I turned my head to see one young guy standingg over another and punching him in the head, again and again. There as no yelling, no screaming, just a deadly unk, thunk, thunk. It’s bbeen a long time ince I’ve been so cloose to such brutality and, even after they had been pulled apart, after thhey had disappeared into the croowd, one bleeding from the eeye, the other nursing his fist, thee monstrosity of what I had seen staayed with me. They couldn’t have been much more than 18. My son is just five ears shy. How do I prepare him for thaat?
How do I teach him to expect the e best in and of people, and yet to be wary, because bad shit does happen?