Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Dilemma that I am facing.

About a year ago I told my older son that very soon he will be in his teens and therefore I would be looking forward to some help from him when he could go on his own on his cycle to foodworld or the nearby grocery store and get me stuff . He was very happy and proud to hear this huge responsibility that was being given to him. It made him feel very important too as he felt grown up. I felt quite happy just thinking that I could send him to buy things which would help me in not only making him independent, learn a little of money matter but I also could do with little bit of help now and then. I wanted to make my child responsible and independent.

Now this was a year ago and still I have not had the courage to let him go on his own. WHY? Because of the reckless way the traffic scenario is in our city. For the past seven years that we have been here we have dropped them every single day to the bus stop and picked them up every single day come rain,sun ,feeling ill or what ever may be the reason. The school bus picks the children from the main road and drops them on the main road. Yes justified as otherwise the last child will be reaching two hours after school if they go into all lanes to drop the children and the buses are huge so reversing would be a big problem. No complaints about that. What irritates me is that though the bus stop is about half a kilometer from home and children are ready to walk I feel so scared to let them go on their own for the single reason that they have to cross the road.

Sometimes I see such young children crossing the road on their own without any adult supervision or I see them going on a bicycle on the main road I marvel at the courage of those mothers who have let their children to be on their own and I feel may be I should also do so. But then just the other day we were waiting to pick up our children from the bus stop and I saw two children and a man crossing the road and all of a sudden an Innova appeared from nowhere at such killer speed that I thought I will be witnessing a gory accident right in front of my eyes. They just missed a crushing end by the breadth of a hair. But I saw the man was totally shaken. We sitting in the car were shaken then imagine the state of the children.

I know I have to overcome these fears. I feel motorists should show respect towards pedestrians and strictly follow rules. This is, but one issue among a plethora of several serious issues that I have discussed here. But I need to start at some point sooner or later. Any suggestions?