Feast After Famine: Should a 7-year-old Cross the Street Alone?

Lately, I've started asking Esme to carry letters or bills to the postbox on the corner. It's a short walk to the end of our street where she has to look both ways, then cross the street, drop the post in the box, look both ways again and run home. 

She's seven. 

The first time she did it, I watched from the porch. She must have looked three or four times before crossing. When she ran home, her smile was wide like a field of sunflowers. She was thrilled with herself, so proud of her independence. 

She's done it several times since. Every time, I've watched her - from the porch, the dining room window, the kitchen. I'm eager to empower her, to help her launch her own adventures - safely and with confidence - but I'm obviously still anxious for her. 

I recall a scene outside National Airport some 15 years ago when my mother waved good-bye to me. I was headed for Africa for a few months with a friend. Leaving with a backpack and no real plans of which countries we would visit or where we would stay, just a general idea of traveling from Cairo to Cape Town. 

My mother hugged me and wished me luck and I think about that now that I'm a mother, how hard it must have been to let go when she had no earthly idea where I was headed. 

I was a grown woman who had graduated school, traveled the world, and lived and worked abroad for three years. But I was still her baby. 

I want Esme to be a brave traveler; I want to be the fearless mother who wishes her well. But that seems hard when we're immersed in such a culture of fear.

Today, our street was crowded with work trucks and cars—several neighbors are in the midst of big renovations and additions. So I told Esme I'd stop at the corner on our way to the grocery store and let her out to drop off the letters. That put her about 30 feet away from the box.

I pulled around the corner, put the car in park and she hopped out. She walked a few paces to the stop sign and waited. At the same time, a car pulled through a separate stop sign near her and slowed. The woman clearly thought Esme was alone and in danger. She rolled down her window to say something to Esme. Esme just stared at her. 

I watched the scene unfold in my rear-view mirror, my window down too. I shouted to Esme that it was OK, to continue across the street. The woman didn't see me. She motioned across the street to a construction worker and said something to him. Like, where is her mother? I don't know. 

I tried to tell her repeatedly that I was Esme's mother and that she was OK but she was older and couldn't hear well. Maybe the construction crews were too noisy. 

Esme dropped off the mail, looked both ways and crossed safely again, then hopped back into the car at which point the woman realized she was with me. She drove closer and put her hand on her chest like we'd given her a heart attack. 

"She's learning to walk to the mailbox," I told the woman. "I watched her the whole way. Thank you for being concerned."

"I guess I'm just old school," the woman said. Still clutching her chest with worry. 

"Thank you," I said again, then rolled up the window. 

Once Esme got settled, I asked her what the woman said. "I don't know," she said. "I couldn't hear her." I used the opportunity to talk to the kids about strangers in cars and staying on the sidewalk, not moving closer to them. We talked about how the woman made her feel. She told me she was worried the woman was going to scold her for doing something wrong. 

I've been thinking about the incident ever since. What did the woman mean by "old school" anyway? Because I would think that when she was raising her kids, they had a ton more freedom to roam than children these days. 

When I was little, I disappeared for hours at a time. I rode my bike alone to the pool on a winding, two-lane road and wandered the paths in the woods near the pond. On half days in elementary school, I walked to McDonalds with friends then, on occasion, the five or so miles it took to get home—on major roads, through numerous stoplights, over a highway.

In junior high school, maybe ninth grade, my mother dropped me and my friends at the New Carrollton Metro Station where we caught the train to Foggy Bottom, then transferred to a bus that took us to the heart of Georgetown. Thirteen-year-olds wandering into Commander Salamander and Urban Outfitters. I think of that now: will I be as brave as my mother? I doubt it. 

I see children a year ahead of Esme walking alone the several blocks it takes to get to and from school. I can think of another girl I know in the neighborhood who can't be more than 10 who frequently plays at the playground without a parent after school. 

But maybe they're the exceptions. Why else would it seem so outlandish that a 7-year-old would walk to the corner mailbox?

I don't want to succumb to fear and yet obviously I want to protect my children's safety. Where's the middle ground here?