Through The Eyes of a Child

I wasn’t going to mention to Addie about the visitor. She used to not be afraid of anything and now, she won’t go into the garage at night by herself. I’ve told her it’s just like another room in the house. it’s closed, it’s locked. You’re safe in there. The fridge that holds all the juice and drinks is in the garage and sometimes she wants something but she wants me to go with her. Lately, she won’t go to the basement by herself. She’ll want to go down and play down there but she wants me to go. I figured not telling her about that incident was best but then, after I called the Sheriff’s Department and didn’t know if they were coming or not, I asked her if we saw someone on the video during the night, would that scare her and she said no, it wouldn’t scare her. So, I told her that there was a man who came onto our porch, sat down, ate some crackers, and then left. I assured her he didn’t try to get in the house and he didn’t take anything. She said “Oh, that’s fine. He was probably a nice man and needed a place to rest.” WHAT?? I wanted to say . . nice people don’t stop at your house, change clothes on your porch, sit there and eat . . especially without asking!” but I didn’t say that. She asked if she could him. She asked to see the video but part of it was a bit “R” rated so I told her all I had kept was his picture and I showed that to her. She said “Oh, he does NOT look nice!”

We had a little discussion about how you cannot judge whether people are nice or not by how they look, and as a child, she doesn’t need to worry but she also should never trust people she doesn’t know. I went ahead and told her that nice people respect other people and their property and nice people should not be going onto other people’s porches without first asking permission.

She didn’t seem too concerned about it but the first thing she asked me this morning was if anyone showed up on the porch last night. Nope .. hopefully will never happen again.