The Value of Neighbors

By Whitney

by Whitney

As soon as my husband and I became parents — well actually, after the initial “get your grubby paws of my new baby” phase had passed — we had to take a harder look at our “village.” With all of our parents living at least a four hour drive away, did we have enough support?

I don’t want to make anyone fall out of their chairs right now, but where we live, it costs at least $16 per hour to have an adult babysitter watch two children. That’s really a side note, though, because the issue here is not whether or not we’ll be able to get out to see a movie from time to time. It’s “What if something really bad happens?” Accidents happen, and so do earthquakes and other acts of god, as they say in the insurance business. As a parent, it’s even more important to be able to ask a neighbor for a hand when you need to accomplish some physical task or deal with an emergency.

Building a relationship with as many neighbors as possible is simply a smart move. You may not get any babysitting out of it, but if you can feel confident that when your neighbor knows what should be going on at your house while you’re out of town, you’ve got a pretty good security system. If the guy who lives three doors down walks by your house at 10 pm and then calls you to let you know that you left your trunk open, even better. Connect with your neighbors to build this network. Do favors, protect each other, and communicate.

Gone are the days of children running all around the block unsupervised until dinnertime. In fact, I’d bet good money that if I told my son to go outside and come back later, he’d sit on our front steps for two or three minutes and then come to me and say, “Mommy, what should I do now?” Oh well, the world has changed. Get used to it.