The story begins a couple of days ago at daycare. There's a family with three kids at the school, the middle child is in Nicholas's class. I saw the mom taking the kids to her car and noticed it was a Honda Civic. As an owner of an Accord I was curious how she could fit three car seats in the back of a Civic. Well, yesterday was my nosy-self's lucky day. She parked next to me in the parking lot! I was leaving as she was going in the building, so I knew this was her car for sure. I buckled the boys into their seats and then casually peeked in her car windows. Not a car seat in sight! There's a closet in the lobby for parents who swap car seats around, or leave car seats for a friend or other family member. I hoped that was the case because I wasn't going to look creepy waiting for her to get her three kids. (I'm only an internet stalker, not in the real world.)
This morning when I was in Travis's classroom I discreetly asked one of the directors if she knew these parents swapped car seats or whatnot. On my way out of the school she let me know that these parents have never done the leaving the car seats in the closet deal. And she too was concerned about the situation. During the day she talked with one of the school's owners and set some things into motion. When I got to school to pick up the boys she pulled me aside in the lobby. It turns out the school had already been planning to have representatives from the police department come in to do a fingerprinting program for the kids. They decided to definitely go forward with that initiative and will include a car seat safety program as well. She said they will put out a strong message that they are aware of car seat safety and how important it is. She and the owner said they could not report the parent, but are very concerned about what could happen off of school grounds. And hopefully this will encourage the parents and others to take action.
You see when I got to work this morning I was hesitant about whether I had done the right thing. Was I being too nosy? Maybe the mother has a good reason for not having car seats? I was concerned for the children's safety and concluded that really no excuse is good enough these days. I know previous generations were fine without them. But there's so much available today to help us protect our children, and well it's also the law. At the end of the day I do feel better for bringing it up to the director, and happy they're going to do a safety program to get the message out. And after telling Adrian, he is thinking about starting a foundation to help get car seats for people who cannot afford them. He already bought the domain name: Safe Seats for Little Seats. Isn't he the right amount of clever and cheesy?
2 comments:
Good for you! How many tragedies happen because people are reluctant to "butt in"? And how do those people (the silent ones) feel later, knowing that they might have helped prevent a tragedy? Tormented, I'd guess.
But I'm wondering (as you did) whether she could even FIT 3 carseats into her car. Maybe she has one or more carseats at home but would only be able to fit one, plus 2 kids in seatbelts, in the back. (And how do you choose which kid gets the carseat?) Or would she have to put one kid in the front to make room for even one carseat in the back, (which would endanger the kid in the front even more)?
There is probably not an easy answer to this, but perhaps the police will give them valuable information, help them find resources, etc.
Yeah, I'm with my mom on this one (there's a shocker). When I worked at BRU, we had people come in sometimes who were about to have their third child and had to buy a bigger car so that they could fit three seats in it. They were annoyed at their cars being too small, but obviously were into the safety thing if they were coming into our store to buy another seat. I can't imagine just ignoring that (though I know that the stats suggest there are a lot of parents who do ignore it), unless there's some real financial problem with getting a different car... but then again, there are a lot of people who don't even teach their kids to buckle up, and that makes me much angrier.
Post a Comment