Sunday, February 24, 2008

Crossing Streets

Today I was in the car with my brother driving and it was a two way street. The light was red, and it was turning green. A mother quickly crossed the street with a carriage and older daughter. The light turned green, and all of a sudden I heard a 3 year old crying. The mother had crossed without her daughter, she then told her daughter to wait there. Meanwhile, the car in the other lane had stopped when he saw the 3 year old on the other side of the street, giving time for the mother to come back across. Instead the mother started walking away. I had an urge to get out of my car and run across the street to the child to keep her company or cross her to her mother. The poor kid was crying. But it was a green light, and we had to go, and my father said "Don't get involved" that the kid has a mother, so I didn't leave the car.

Its an important thing when crossing streets with kids, to hold their hands, and make sure all of them cross with you. First of all, people shouldn't be crossing when they see the flashing red hand, signifying that its about to turn green for the cars. Second of all, the adult should walk behind the kids, making sure the kid gets across first, cause usually kids because their smaller are hard to see, and this way there is more of a chance that the car will see the adult and wait.

14 comments:

  1. The mother started walking away while her 3 year old was stuck on the other side?! How awful!
    With all due respect to your father, I disagree with him. Getting out and helping the child cross safely would have been the right thing to do. That child was in danger and the mother obviously didn't care.

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  2. OMG!!
    Thats awful!!
    You come across terrible stories, first the person that left the young kid in the car, and now this!!
    OY!

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  3. yea, the mother continued walking on the sidewalk away from the street, I didn't get to stay to see what happened, hopefully everything was okay at the end.
    Yea, if I was walking on the sidewalk behind them, I would have ran up to the child. I felt like it was the right thing to go out too...
    But yea, seems like there are a lot of careless mothers out there. Not to blame them, but still.
    But its amazing the Hashgacha Pratis of it all, there were other stories too, not such major ones, that I was there right on time to help a kid.

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  4. What would possess her to cross w/ an older daughter but not a little one? That is really odd . . . and why wasn't the older daughter holding onto the little one or something?

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  5. good question: "why wasn't the older daughter holding onto the little one or something?"

    I'm assuming maybe the child didn't want to cross the street, so they crossed before her, hoping the child would follow them.

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  6. seeing parents like that always makes you stop and wonder...did she really think it was safe to leave her little daughter, hoping she'd follow? kids can be pretty stubborn...
    but seriously, who leaves their kid behind when crossing the street....

    they just don't make parents the way they used to...

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  7. "they just don't make parents the way they used to..."

    Well...My mom made a comment the other day to the rabbi on how alot of girls are not mature enough to get married these days.
    My rabbi (surprisingly) agreed and said "But what do you want us to do, sterilize them? they're still more mature than in any community"

    Yup...thats right...justify yourself by being the best, even if its not quite good enough,and allow cute little 3 year olds to potentially get into a fatal accident...
    yup...but we're "more mature"

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  8. I still fantasize about requiring a parental competency test for people who want to have kids...

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  9. lol lol...Bas Melech...Id so second that if it ever even came up as an idea (ofcourse if from a politician, I probably wouldn't)

    The problem is, if it came up in the frum community, they'd consider certain sects of Judaism as automatically incompetent in having children...but otherwise, that would be awesome :)

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  10. It was wise not to get involved for many reasons. One the mother may accuse you of kidnapping the child. Also, she obviously had evil intent and was looking for someone to get involved.

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  11. That probaly wasn`t even her child as Anonymous said she had evil intentions.I think you should write a book.

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  12. lol, anonymous and opinion: not quite. You have to judge likav zechus. I'm sure the mother had good intentions. Don't worry, she wouldn't have accused me of kidnapping.

    (btw, mixed up way of thinking, try to think POSITIVE)

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  13. But yea, about the parenting competency test, I think that would be a great idea, although on paper people may have the right ideas, and they may know what's correct, but what's it comes to applying those ideas they might not do such a good job.

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  14. as for the parent competancy test, I'm going to write a post on it.

    there are some things that I'm thinking about that might actualy be usefull for that.

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