This morning, Raphaela and I did our usual ten minute walk to the care taker. Along the way we passed a teenage boy with his younger brother, a sweet little boy around three years old. All of a sudden, I heard an older Israeli man shouting at me, "Ma'am, you forgot your son." I turned around, quite confused. It turned out that the teenage boy had allowed his brother to wander off, and the older man naturally assumed that it was my child and I had somehow lost track of him, in my rush to get my even smaller baby to our destination.
From the days of Ben Gurion, Israel as a country has actively encouraged the expansion of the family, and has become internationally acclaimed for their cutting-edge fertility treatments. So I don't understand how the Israeli mentality has evolved into a culture that regularly forgets their babies in cars or at the beach, or presumes that a parent would "forget" a three year old boy and send him wandering in traffic.
El Al, the Jewish national airline, is the only air carrier I know that does not pre-board families with small children.
It is surreal moments like these that sadden me, and I wonder if Israel has lost its way from the ideals I espouse, and from the supportive atmosphere in which I had hoped to raise my own children.
3 comments:
give the man some credit-he could have ignored the boy and not mentioned it
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/how-could-any-parent-forget-th/
Even the most diligent and caring parent can forget a child in a car. Don't think it can't happen to you. And the whole concept of a "culture" regularly forgetting children in various places doesn't even makes sense. Just the opposite: Israeli culture as a whole is a much more attentive to the children in its midst than America- there are many more playgrounds, day care centers and preschools (government regulated) and general services for children than there are in America. Universal preschool is just a pipe dream in America.
I'd hardly consider lack of preboarding for small children on El Al a barometer for how Israelis treat children in general.
I see it the opposite way: parents feel free to let their kids roam around because it feels safer here . . . and there is always an old man around to make sure you get your kid back.
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