<p>My Mom does the arm thing. I never have. (My kids weren’t in the front seat until high school and even then they are so used to sitting in the back they rarely sit up front.) My dh is a big weenie and was always telling them to be careful if they were doing anything slightly exciting. I’m of the school that if you tell people to “Be careful” too much it makes them nervous and self-conscious and they are more likely to flub up.</p>
<p>Before my daughter left for Europe, I bought her luggage tags. They have her initials and last name, her cell, her dad’s cell, our home number. I bought four. She didn’t even ask why I bought four. She put one on her purse and one on her backpack… then turned to me and said “I get it that the third one goes in my pocket so they can identify my body after my purse and backpack are stolen, but what’s the fourth one for?”</p>
<p>“That’s a spare.”</p>
<p>Oh yes, and I still whack my kids in the chest with my right hand at every single stop light. Funny thing… if I let my son drive, he whacks me.</p>
<p>When our daughter’s friends started getting their drivers license, we never allowed our daughter to be in their cars. We drove her everywhere because we didn’t want her to be left out. On one Fri afternoon, they decided to go to one friend’s house after school, then to a movie. All of her friends lived at least .5 hour away from us. We picked her up at school, dropped her off at her friend’s house, then went back to her friend’s house to drive her to the movie and picked her up after the movie. My reputation preceded me that her prom date offered to drive me around a block a few times to check out his driving even before I asked.</p>
<p>LTS, I laughed really hard reading your celebratory dinner story!</p>
<p>Once I was shopping with my little one and we came into a store wich had some rabbit-fur trimmed coats on display. DD touched the fir and asked, “Mommy, it is so soft, what is it made of?” “I think it is rabbit”, I said without even thinking that we had a pet bunny at home at that time. DD, having heard that, started screaming “Bunny killers! Bunny killers! You kill little bunnies for fur! You should be ashamed of yourselves!” Everyone in that store turned around to see who the screaming Peta activist was and if they needed to run for their lives. Needless to say, we left the store in a hurry.</p>
<p>This past summer I had the wonderful experience of visiting my son for two weeks in Hong Kong. He’d been there a couple months, from New York, on business…it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, just the 2 of us halfway around the world (I’m not a traveller).</p>
<p>Near the end of the first weekend, as we were going to bed, he asked me sheepishly, “Dad, can you take 5 shirts from my closet and iron them for me for this week?”. He asked the same for the next week.</p>
<p>In spite of the fact that he’s 25, I was flattered (is that weird? I hope not). That Monday I accompanied him in the cab to his office, where he shortly no doubt would be problem solving for one of the world’s great investment banks. But I couldn’t help but chuckle wondering what his hot-shot coworkers might think if they knew daddy had ironed his shirts for the week!</p>
<p>Haha, Im seventeen and am frequently the taxi service of my fifteen y/o brother and whenever I am braking harder than usual (like if the light turns yellow when I am quite close) I shoot my hand out to “protect” my brother… Its weird. Like instinctive. I dont think my parents ever did it. I sometimes accidently do it to my friends too.</p>
<p>We live in a rather pedestrian oriented town. There is something in me that still wants to hold my Ds hand when we cross a street together. Maybe, at my advanced age, this is for my safety rather than hers. She is a companionable sort, and walks arm in arm with friends, and me at times. But laughs at when I instinctively grab her hand or arms we step off the curb. All those years of finding two little hands as we crossed streets wired something into me.</p>
<p>S, 19, was a 28-week premie who was hospitalized for 6 weeks after his birth, and came home with respiratory problems and at risk of sudden infant death syndrome. </p>
<p>Even when he was as old as 4, I would check on him in the middle of the night because I feared he would die of crib death.</p>
<p>Flash forward to when he was 14-- a very healthy, tall 14. At 3 p.m. on a Sat. afternoon, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen him all day. I ran to his bedroom, banged on his door and yelled, “Are you dead?”</p>
<p>He calmly replied that he was reading in bed.</p>
<p>We still laugh about that, but back then, when I ran for his bedroom door, I was panicked.</p>
<p>Love this thread!
Northstarmom: been there, done that.
Except, when asked “are you dead?” S says ‘yes’.
I learned to say “Are you okay?” instead.</p>
<p>Cute stories!</p>
<p>Northstar, I used to do the same thing w/my son – check his breathing occasionally (until he started shutting the door to his bedroom at night at age 15).</p>
<p>When I first married my husband 7 years ago…sometimes he’d be in a really deep sleep and I’d wave my hand in front of his nose to feel if he was breathing, as I’d do w/my son. He’d wake up: “What in the world are you doing?” Hard to explain.</p>
<p>And it never ends! H visited a 90-old-man in a hospital bed, and mentioned he’d just seen his son going out of the elevator.</p>
<p>The man beamed. “So, how’s my baby boy?” </p>
<p>Baby boy being 70 years old, of course.</p>
<p>Oh latetoschool, your story is hilarious!!!</p>
<p>I experienced something similar with my son, but not in public, so I can totally relate!</p>
<p>NSM and Karen Colleges, my mom sends me emails with the subject line “ARE YOU DEAD?” I shudder to think what would happen if, heaven forbid, I were away from the internet for a day or two.</p>
<p>She also reads the Boston newspapers more frequently than I do (she lives in Ohio) and sends me emails when particularly frightening or dangerous things occur in or around the city.</p>
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<p>Gosh, don’t all parents do that?</p>
<hr>
<p>NSM: My son wasn’t a preemie but was in intensive care for 10 days, so I too got in the habit of checking on him, even when he was older. Some irrational fear from having almost lost him, so it makes sense actually.</p>
<p>As a public service note:
If you haven’t heard from your college kid for awhile, most campus security offices will be happy to knock at the students dorm room. They told my friend who inquired, ‘yes, your son is in his room’.</p>
<p>I occasionally remind S. of the option of having security drop in to see if he is dead- he is usually appalled enough to send me an email.</p>
<p>Say, are any of you going to be on that morning show about overprotective/helicopter parents? </p>
<p>I’m thinking that the really excessive helicopters won’t know that they are what he is looking for. (They don’t see anything odd about hovering in a holding pattern.)</p>