The Scariest Five Minutes of my Life

Everyday our lives are hectic – especially now that it’s summer, it’s hard to juggled all.the.things, especially when it comes to childcare.  The other day, my older son had a camp field trip to go bowling, which I COMPLETELY forgot about of course, but as I was dropping him off at the bowling alley (after having dropped off my younger son at his first day of camp), I texted my nanny and said “no need to pick the boys up, I can get them this afternoon” after which I raced home, attempted to squeeze in two hours of work and immediately raced back out the door.  My logic behind my madness was this – since I had to run an errand that was really close to the bowling alley, it made sense for me to just pick my older son up, and since I was picking him up, well it just made sense to pick the little one up too.  Makes sense right?

My first stop was to go get my younger son, my 3 year old, from his first day camp.  So I parked my car, walked up to the camp counselor, smiled and began looking for my son…hmm he was nowhere to be found.  I began asking the counselors “have you seen my kid?”  Now they’re frantically looking around for him saying “I just saw him a second ago…” while I start to panic as well.  Finally his camp counselor came up to me and said “Oh, another woman came to pick him up, she seemed to know him so I let him go with her”

Just try and imagine the look on my face – I thought I was going to punch this young woman in the face – I immediately began questioning her, “Well, did she tell you her name?  Did she show you ID?  Did she give you a phone number?”  To which the counselor said “Well, he seemed to know her too…”.  I was livid.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  In the back of my mind, I assumed it had been my nanny who had picked him up, she may not have gotten the text, but my heart and my mind were racing. How could they let a child go with a stranger?!  What if an abusive parent with a restraining order came to pick up a child?!  It doesn’t matter if the child knows the grown up, you can’t just let a child go with whoever he knows!!  

I was ready to start yelling, but instead I calmly asked “Excuse me? Did you at least get the woman’s name?”  The young woman slowly shook her head ‘no’ with tears welling in her eyes.  I immediately called my nanny to ask if she had picked up my 3 year old, to which she said yes.  I calmly told the counselor that he was safe and that it was my nanny who picked him up, then I  turned, walked back to my car and got in.  I couldn’t stop the tears from coming before I closed my car door.  I had lived through one of my greatest fears as a mom, and even though my story had a pretty benign and happy ending, I thought my heart was going to come out of my mouth.

Being a mom has brought along a swath of irrational fears, as well as the guilt of having someone else watch my child.  I absolutely adore my nanny and know my kids do as well, but my primal fear is something is going to happen to them when I’m not there.  Needless to say I sent a stern email to the camp supervisor, and squeezed my 3 year old a bit tighter than usual when I got home.

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Priya Amin
Priya Amin is a mom of two rambunctious boys, and is a serial entrepreneur. Her latest project is Flexable, a tech company helping parents and caregivers connect better, by allowing caregivers to intelligently "advertise" their availability. In the past, Priya worked in Corporate America for companies such as IBM and Nestle, before leaving to be a stay at home mom. She launched a successful consulting business called ROKI (named after her boys Ronin and Kirin) prior to launching Flexable, and enjoys the chaos of motherhood x work.