A few weeks ago, Reagan's preschool had "community helper" week. They
had visits from a policeman, a fireman, an EMT, and other community
helpers.
As any preschool parent can attest, this has
heightened Reagan's awareness of these community helpers in our daily
travels. She keeps a sharp eye out for uniforms, emergency vehicles, and
anything else that would indication that someone is ready to assist.
Unfortunately,
despite the education on everything the police force does, the
preschoolers, like most preschoolers, focused solely on the "bad guy"
aspect. Whenever Reagan sees a police car, she shakes her head sadly and
says "there must be a bad guy."
Well, last week we had to
pull over several times to let emergency vehicles by. Since Reagan was
so interested in the vehicles themselves, I took the opportunity to
teach about WHY we pull over to let the emergency cars pass. While
Reagan was insistent that there must be a lot of bad guys that the
police were rushing to stop, I speculated that it was probably a car
accident.
Sure enough, as we continued, we saw that it
was, quite clearly, an accident on a main road. Reagan seemed a little
disappointed by the absence of any superhero-ish bad guy/good guy
standoffs (don't judge, we're still in a superhero phase), Madison
immediately started in on how worried she was, and how sad she was, and
how horrible it must be to be in a car accident. She was so glad that I
am "the best driver" and it would never happen to us.
And then I had to explain that I had in
fact been in accidents. One that was my fault, one that wasn't, and one
that was the fault of a deer (literally, the deer hit me). Madison
started to panic, and I let her know that accidents happen. You do your
best to avoid them, but sometimes, they do happen, and it's more
important to know what to do.
Reagan
piped up and told us that the firemen had taught them how to be safe,
but they also taught them what to do in case of a fire. And I pointed
out that we know how to try and stay safe, but that if there ever IS a
problem, we know how to react and how to get in touch with our community
helpers.
What if we get hurt?
What if there's a fire?
What if someone is acting tricky to us and we feel scared?
It's
a fine line. I don't want the girls to be scared - to see a world full
of fires and car accidents and ambulance rides and people lurking in the
shadows to snatch them. But I do want them to know that there are
people out there to help them, and that we can get through things
together.
