The New Fear Moms are Learning to Live With

Last weekend, my family drove to Monteagle in Tennessee for a hike on the famous Fiery Gizzard Trail. The full trail is 12 miles long and includes a very steep rock climb up the wall of a gorge in order to make it to the end– However, my husband assured me that we would only walk the first part of the trail, a ‘very flat’ path, in his words, that would end at a lovely waterfall. Since he’d hiked the full trail before, I took the man at his word.

Big mistake.

The hike itself was absolutely gorgeous, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. We made our way deep into the heart of a lush, unspoiled forest on a path that followed a crystal clear stream with numerous cascades, waterfalls, and swimming holes.  It would have been absolutely perfect, were it not for the fact that the path was actually not ‘very flat.’ The truth was that much of it ran along steep ridges with sharp drop-offs that, in my mom mind, anyway, could send a clumsy, distracted child tumbling to his doom. To make matters worse, I had done the unthinkable– I had allowed my children to wear their Crocs.

Crocs have inspired more side-eye from child safety experts than any other shoe out there. Crocs, we are told, are probably the most dangerous shoe ever made. Letting a child wear Crocs on an escalator is basically asking for his little toes to be caught and mangled in the machinery. Running in Crocs is almost guaranteed to end in scraped knees, knocked-out front teeth and a head injury. Most day camps and play centers specifically outlaw Crocs, I’m guessing for insurance reasons.

Maybe this is why kids love Crocs so damn much.

My children have clamored for Crocs every summer since they started walking– and I have to admit, none of the things I was warned about have ever happened while they were wearing them. But that, I knew as I trailed along the cliff behind my children and stared balefully at the adorably hideous death traps that encased their little feet, was probably about to change.

“I can’t believe you told me this trail was flat, Dennis,” I grumbled for the 100th time as we made our way along a steep precipice over a pile of shifting rocks. My son stumbled and I stifled a scream.

“They’re doing fine,” my husband reassured me. “It’s really not that bad. Why are you so scared?”

I started to answer, then stopped. Why was I so scared? My children really were old enough to handle the trail (I admit, I may have been given to hyperbole when describing the steepness) and my rational mind knew full well the odds were very good that nothing bad would happen.

And yet.

“I don’t want to be Crocs Mom, okay?” I said to my husband in a rush. “If something happens, I will forever be known to everyone as Crocs Mom. And I. Don’t. Want. That.”

I mean, I could already picture the headlines: POLICE SAY CROCS TO BLAME AFTER CHILD TUMBLES DOWN STEEP RIDGE. And the Nancy Grace show that would surely follow: COULD MOM BE PROSECUTED FOR LETTING KIDS HIKE TREACHEROUS TRAIL IN INAPPROPRIATE FOOTWEAR? And the blog posts: WHY I WOULD NEVER LET MY KID HIKE IN CROCS.

And I realized something surprising when I actually stopped to think about it– Although I shudder to think of something terrible and beyond my control happening to a family member, I’m even more afraid of something happening that I possibly could have prevented. In other words, I didn’t follow my children on that hike with the intensity of a Secret Service agent at a presidential inauguration because I really believed it was likely they would trip and fall and plummet to their doom– I did it because THEY WERE WEARING CROCS, OMG, HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID, TOTAL MOMFAIL, and if, heaven forbid, something, anything, did happen?

It would be all my fault.

You know as well as I do what’s brought me to this lowly state– Social media! Nearly every day now, we read about horrible things happening to children, followed by reams of commentary about what the parents could have done to prevent it. Just recently, ‘Gorilla Mom’ was run through the public opinion wringer after her child climbed into a gorilla enclosure at the zoo. On this particular day, people are arguing over whether the parents of the child killed by an alligator at Walt Disney World were negligent for letting him wade in the lagoon– a lagoon I’ve (*shudder*) let my own children dip their toes in more than a few times.

Thanks to the Internet, I know a little too much now about all the many ways a child can be seriously injured– and so I make sure my kids wear helmets when riding anything with wheels. (SO many stories about ‘freak accidents’ on scooters and skateboards and bikes. SO MANY.) I don’t let them lie down in the backseat on long car trips, even when wearing a seatbelt. (Have you heard what can happen if a kid’s in the wrong position in a seatbelt during a crash? I HAVE.) I always cut grapes in half when the kids were small (CHOKING!), I make sure their life jackets are properly fitted on boats (They can slip right out of them in the water if they aren’t tight enough!), I’ve had endless discussions with my kids about stranger danger and good touch/bad touch and where to go if they wake up and the house is on fire and basically the proper solution to every other cautionary tale I’ve seen on Facebook.

And still. There I was. On a cliff. With two Crocs-wearing kids.

EFFING CROCS MOM.

Miraculously, my children made it through the hike unscathed (although the Crocs did leave a blister or two) and that’s why you aren’t arguing now on Scary Mommy about whether my kid would be in a body cast today if I’d had him in proper hiking boots. I won’t have to live with the Crocs Mom label, but seeing as how my kids didn’t come away with any serious injuries, I bet some of you are forming other judgements now, instead. In fact, I know you are. I’ve seen those posts on social media, too.

She needs to get a grip. Her kids are overprotected. How will they ever learn to take care of themselves if she’s constantly hovering over them like that? Thank God my kids have some freedom to roam without me running after them with Bactine and Band-Aids. She’s such a Helicopter Mom. Such a HoverMom.

Can you imagine the snickering and snide comments a mom would have gotten last week if she’d worriedly gone up to every parent whose kid was wading in the waters bordering Disney’s ‘beaches’, warning them that a large alligator just might suddenly attack their child?

Do you get what I’m saying here, moms? We just. Can’t. Win.

Follow Suburban Turmoil and see MORE bad parenting decisions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest!