A Four-Year Olds Innocence

The end of last week we were at the carwash cleaning my car inside and out. Bryce and Andrew were in the car and I was getting ready to vacuum. All of a sudden we hear screaching, squealing tires, and metal hitting. It scared me to death! I hit my head on the top of the car when I jumped. I looked up and saw a bad accident - there was one building between us and the accident, but it sounded like it was right behind me!

A suv had turned across traffic to pull into a bank and a big work van had hit the side of the suv, flipped it on its side and came to a rest with the front of the van against the bottom of the suv. I grabbed my phone ready to call, but saw cars stopping and running to help the person trapped in the suv (it had landed on the drivers side).

As a mother who always has kids in the car, I struggle with what to do in situations like this. I would, of course, want to offer any help I could. But with no medical background, I am pretty useless other than making a phone call. My real struggle is that, since you would come up on a scene like that and NOT know what you are going to find, I would not want to traumatize my children with what could be at the scene. There was an accident last year that I drove past and had Bryce with me. It had just happened. A car was in the middle of the interstate and one pulled off. The man inside the car did not look like he was going to make it, but I did not have a choice but to drive by it. I was able to distract Bryce to look at something out the other side of the car as we drove by though.

This accident last week, we were close enough to see the accident, but too far away to really SEE anything. Bryce was excited that several fire trucks came and an ambulance and police. He kept asking if we could go take a picture of the accident to show to Daddy and his brothers. I tried to explain that accidents are not good, and someone could VERY possibly be VERY injured or even killed. In his little four year old mind, it just looked interesting seeing a car on its side and ALL of the emergency vehicles. He is so focused to chasing firetrucks that it is hard to make him understand that when the sirens are on, we can't play with them.

Yesterday, the firetruck (with his buddies) and an ambulance came a couple of houses down from us. We were outside when this happened. I let him watch the firetruck for a little while, but we came in when the ambulance came, just in case. I know he does not want someone to be hurt, but it is hard to keep his innocence and let him enjoy the excitement of the firetrucks, while trying to protect him from what could be seen.