My family makes quite a spectacle when we go out in public. There are eight of us, but this isn’t what drops the jaws of those around us. What drops their jaws is the fact that seven of us are male.
If or when you see us on the streets of my city, you will likely see someone lagging far behind and someone else racing far ahead. Since our twins grew out of traveling in a stroller, this has become even more pronounced. Which means, for safety measures, we had to invest in some backpack leashes.
You probably already know about this interesting invention, but I’ll tell you my take anyway. The foundation of today’s backpack leashes is a cute little stuffed animal—we have a bear and a monkey missing two ears because my twins are nothing if not destructive. These leashes have a harness you can strap to your toddler’s body. The tail of whatever animal you’ve chosen has a leash you can hold so if your kid happens to run out into the parking lot like it’s a fun game to get smashed by the tires of a car, you can steer him back from his overzealous play.
Hypothetically.
At first I felt bad about using these leashes. Before I was a parent, I’d seen other parents using them and always thought them cruel and distasteful (the leashes, not the parents).
So many things change when you have children, including your attitude about putting kids on a leash.
The first time one of my twins was released from the confines of our car and darted straight for the road while we were wrestling another kid away from the packed lunch and I, in my eighth month of pregnancy with his little brother, raced to save him from an unsuspecting driver barreling toward him, I just about had a heart attack (not to mention what happened to my pants). I didn’t think I was going to make it. (That was nothing compared to the next day, though. I could hardly move, I was so sore.)
And I knew we had to do something about our toddlers’ freedom. I knew I wasn’t getting any faster, and they weren’t getting any fewer. There were two of them, after all. One could distract both parents (it takes two to handle one of them) while the other did God knows what.
Leashes it was.
The first time we used our backpack leashes was on a family trip to the San Antonio Zoo. The leashes saved our twins’ lives seventeen billion times—and that was before we even left the parking lot.
Say what you want to say about what that indicates—I’ll probably agree. They’re impulsive boys who don’t think about the consequences of their actions. They don’t hear us unless we raise our voices (and their hearing has always tested fine). They are the most difficult of our children to manage.
So we slap leashes on them.
Child leashes make other people uncomfortable. I get it; as I admitted above, I used to be uncomfortable with them, too. But after a certain point, don’t you trust a parent to do what’s best for their kids?
Seems lots of people actually don’t. When Husband and I are walking past the local zoo’s dining area, where our kids always loudly complain about how hungry they are, people make a point to catch our eye and then, while we’re looking, shake their heads at our cruelty (maybe it’s the kids complaining of hunger, not the leashes. We’ll never know. I don’t really care.). When we are speed-walking past the alligators (leashes only protect from so much), on our way to the petting zoo, people eye Husband and me like we’re the Worst Parents Ever (we are, according to our still-hungry kids). When we’re in the middle of a crowd because everyone’s trying to see the panther that just woke up, and someone, who wasn’t paying attention, runs right into the leash, that someone scowls at us.
Most of the time, I take it like a champ. People don’t know others’ reality until they live it.
Sometimes, though, I say things that are almost guaranteed to make those scowlers even more convinced of my awful parenting. Here are a few of those things.
1. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just taking my kids for a walk.”
I like to save this one for the dog owners we pass who actually leash their dogs. They look at me like I’m a disgusting excuse for a parent, but do I care? The answer to that question is no.
2. “Kids are like dogs—may as well leash them.”
I’m only speaking the truth. You throw a ball to a toddler, and he will happily retrieve it for you, maybe even with his tongue out. A toddler will pee wherever he wants to, as if he’s marking his territory. You chase a kid, and he will hightail it out of there, just like any spooked dog. And if you’ve ever been kissed by an eighteen-month-old with bad aim, you know it’s exactly like a face full of dog slobber (except much sweeter, in my opinion).
3. “You should see them when they’re not leashed.”
This is all in good fun, but seriously. You do not want to see our twins unleashed. It is physically impossible for them to stay in one place. The times we’ve been brave enough to let them walk without holding onto the bear’s or monkey’s tail, we always regret that small taste of freedom.
Also, unleashed, my twins would very likely do something ridiculously stupid. They have no concept of what is dangerous and what is not, and I wouldn’t put it past them to nip at the heels of the cars speeding by. Pardon me if I don’t want them flattened beneath the tires of someone (a) going way too fast, (b) playing with their cell phone, or (c) likely both.
4. “It’s a good thing they invented kid leashes, huh? Keeps them in one place for however long you want. I use them all the time in my backyard!”
I like to say this to make scowlers think that we actually use our kid-leashes for other times besides when we’re walking in the middle of a crowded, dangerous place. (We don’t.) You should see their faces.
5. “If you loved them, then you shoulda put a leash on them.”
This is usually sung facetiously to the tune of Beyonce’s hit song, “Single Ladies.” It’s great when you’re going for surprise that quickly turns into judgment. My favorite.
6. “Oh, okay. I’ll let out the slack a little. They like knowing they have a little freedom, right? But not too much. Can’t be too careful.”
I punctuate this with a crazy little cackle, because, well, I like them to look at me like I’m crazy. Because I kind of am. And it’s funny, because backpack leashes don’t actually have slack. They’re made so that a kid can only be a few feet away from you, which is where they’re safest.
We’ve slowly trained helped our twins to better accept the reality of their leashes, and they no longer pull against them. In fact, they take their captivity like champs. And every now and then, we’ll feel a bit hopeful and try the whole freedom thing again. We’ll tuck their leash-tails into the backpack part and point out the elusive panther as we pass. It takes them only moments to do exactly what we expect them to do: divide and conquer, except it’s not so much conquering as it is disappearing so completely that we’ll spend the next half hour trying to locate them, hoping they’re not the kid on the evening news who was mauled by a tiger.
Husband will enlist the help of several zoo employees while I stay put trying not to lose any more children. And just when we’re about to lose hope, our missing son will come careening toward us, running for his life, because there’s a zoo employee trying to pick him up, and he doesn’t talk to strangers.
The leashes will not come off for the rest of the day, and our son won’t even whine or yip about it.
Hypothetically.
Say what you want to say. I know those leashes save lives.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
