Yes, many years ago I let my 7 year-old son and 10-year old daughter remain in our car near the entrance to a store I needed to run into for a very few minutes. Safe neighborhood, etc., but this was out of character for me at the time.
As I was paying for my purchase, a clearly distraught older man hurried into the store carrying my bloody son in his arms. The bottom line is that my son was amusing himself flipping a nickel in the air while my daughter read, and accidentally flipped it out the car window where it rolled under the car next to ours. He got out and spotted the nickel, and reached under the back of the car to get his coin.
Meantime, the driver returned from the from the other direction, got inside and started the car and began backing out after checking his mirrors. His bumper caused a serious gash and scrape on my son’s side, and I rushed him to the ER since the emergency services couldn’t decide who had jurisdiction.
He eventually healed ok but had a very painful injury, still has a bad scar in his 40’s. He now has two small boys of his own (the ultimate parental revenge) who have heard how Dad got hurt. I would not do that again, and would never assume that normally “responsible” kids can’t get into a bad fix very quickly. It happened too fast for my daughter to realize what was happening and call out. It could have been much worse, of course. I always regretted not taking them with me that day. Since then, during my working years, I saw far too many innocent situations go sour. For the record, neither of my kids turned out to be timid or fearful, and both are very productive, responsible adults. 7 year-olds just do dumb things at times, period.
And at the age of 7, I flew over my handlebars, knocked out a tooth, and began a history of dental problems that have followed me to this day.
Life is tough. Stuff happens. I hope my mother hasn’t been plagued by this incident, but I wouldn’t have done anything different, other than hit the brakes to slow down a little earlier.
Other then telling him to be more careful, we never did take the step of taking away his bike or forbidding him to ride his bike again out of our supervision. Though that might have been the reaction of many other parents. He must have learned his limits though because he never got into another bicycle accident again.
You are right about young kids doing dumb things. Unfortunately, we cannot be with them every minute of every day to protect them unless we want to completely isolate them from the outside world. And that's not a healthy way to raise a child.
I think back to when I was a kid. My mother would take me shopping and I'd much rather sit in the car and read a library book or even just listen to the car radio than to go inside of a store. I was in Little League then and I remember walking to practice and then walking back home afterwards. I don't think either of my parents ever came to a single Little League practice and I played Little League ball for years. Maybe one of them showed up for a game here and there but that was a rarity. That was not unusual by the way. In those days, most parents did not involve themselves in every second of their child's play.
When I put my own kids in Little League, every single kid had at least one parent sitting in a lawn chair - and that was for PRACTICE! God forbid you should actually miss an actual game. And once that game was over, you have 50 cars trying to leave the parking lot at the same time.
Don't get me going on bus stops! When I was growing up, I walked to school or I walked to the bus stop. Now maybe when I was in first grade, my mother walked me to the bus stop. But that was it.
These days, not only are parents at the bus stop for their HIGH SCHOOL children, but they actually drive their kids to the bus stop even if it's just a block away. I've literally seen it happen. A garage door will open and a minivan will back out and drive two houses down where it will idle until the bus arrives. Then you will see a fully grown 16-year-old kid step out of the vehicle and walk 15 steps to the bus while his mother waves and blows kisses the whole way.
This is just way too much "helicopter" parenting for me.
No wonder so many adult children never leave the nest.