Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

It seems that we’ve reached this awkward age of parenting and despite wishing so many long, hard days away (and not having them go any faster than they were going before I started wishing), it’s still happened sooner than I thought it would.

Surprisingly I’m not talking about answering an endless well of awkward questions like, why we grow hair on places other than our heads, what a period is or “WHY IS THAT LADY SO FAT?” said at the top of their lungs.  Those questions I can handle – our kids are more capable of hearing and accepting things from us than we think, despite how awkwardly we explain them.

No, my current dilemma is:

Darling, you gotta let me know, should I stay or should I go?

You see, we’ve just found ourselves in that new phase of our kids getting invited to a party but with the drop and go option. Not familiar with the term drop and go? It’s where you leave your kid with a stranger that you have possibly only met twice in the carpool and then you pick them up a couple of hours later hoping that your innocent little gift hasn’t been irrevocably damaged.

Am I overreacting? I’m going to go with a no.

Look, I’m fully aware that not everyone is Dexter without the “moral compass” of only killing the bad guys or that they are one goatee away from being a convicted paedophile, but guys it happens. Often when you least expect it. I’m pretty sure that any paedophile, walking around with his well groomed goatee and smile that leaves you cold inside – basically giving off any/all of the paedo vibes – would not be successful. Ugh, successful is the wrong word. I feel sick thinking about it. But you know what I mean.

Any respectable paedo is going to act like a normal person until you happily leave your child with them. But when you’ve driven off, they’ve immediately spike your kids organic apple juice and who knows what happens after that.

Side note: A “respectable paedo” is not a thing. It’s sarcasm, or something. The only respectable paedo is a dead one. Maybe I have too much Dexter in me. Hmmm.

And sleep overs?  Don’t even get me started on that folks.  That’s so far off the radar it might as well be a Big Brother winner.

It’s not that I don’t trust the parents of the kids that they go to school with… Oh no wait. That’s exactly it. I don’t trust them. It’s nothing personal really, but waving at each other as we walk past is not enough for me to trust you with a large piece of my heart that happens to walk around outside my body, in the shape of my child.

For me to be able to drop and go, I would need to know both of those parents (and siblings) much better than just their names and faces. I’d start with blood type, criminal history, medical records, mental health issues, family history and their stance on Nik Naks as the elementary testing phase.

What really blew my mind though is that out of a group of say, 13 girls, I was the only Mom who stayed.  Granted the hosts were amazing – you immediately felt like you could trust them, and for half of the girls, they had been together at their last school for a couple of years so their parents probably knew each other much better than I did, but still.

I’m starting to think that 30 is going to be an appropriate age to start making use of this option, you know when I let them out of the basement.

I joke, I joke.

Maybe.

Anyway, I wanted to know from you, at what age would you feel comfortable with a drop and go? Do you have kids that you’re already doing the drop and go with? How did you bring yourself to that point to be able to let go? I’m not really going to lock my child up like Rapunzel for the rest of her life, but I’m not taking any chances.

Come hang out with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.