What are we doing in Costa Rica?

In our time here in Puerto Viejo, I’ve noticed something interesting about the energy parents put into keeping their kids safe. Kids here seem to have a lot more freedom than children the same age in the States. You see little kids riding adult bikes by themselves, or playing in the street together (the quiet side streets — they’re not dodging traffic or anything), or walking through town. You also see a lot of parents biking with their kids perched any which way on the handlebars. I saw a mom riding down the main street one day with a small boy standing behind her holding on with one hand. He looked blissfully confident. I’ve seen one baby carried in a carseat bucket, and that was a tourist family. Overall, I don’t think carseats are widely used here, though I haven’t researched it. The playground in town has really overgrown grass (snakes!), broken swings, rusted ladder rungs, etc.

I’m enjoying this in certain small ways. I love that on the property here Graham can be out of my sight and I feel comfortable that he’s safe as long as I know where he is. He’s not a huge risk taker, so he always comes back into my line off vision shortly. Even Dean can wander way more freely here than at home. The couple of times we’ve had a ride into town with the kids, there was no question that we’d bring the carseats. We did have them strapped in on the way from San Jose — my heart would never have been able to take the lane changes otherwise! — but they’re currently gathering dust upstairs.

Certain things are different here that make these safety things palatable. The drives have been short and slow. It’s a TINY town (I see the same people all the time) and people know each other and their kids. Cars are very accustomed to sharing the road with bikes and pedestrians and are generally very courteous. But it definitely puts an interesting perspective on things. I spent hours researching car seats when it was time to switch Graham into something bigger. I wouldn’t dream of leaving Dean unsupervised in our front yard in Texas. Yet maybe when we get back I’ll a slightly less paranoid mama? Who knows…

In an interesting twist, apparently Americans are much more cavalier about babysitters than the Ticos. I thought it would be easy to find some part-time babysitting here, but the idea was met with… well, not horror by our hostess, but no recommendations either. “I don’t know who I could trust — I mean, it’s your children!” were her exact words, if I recall correctly. Pretty different from the “Hey, that kid down the street looks old enough to dial 9-1-1,” approach to hiring sitters that a lot of Americans have. (For the record, our sitters in TX have all come from trusted recommendations or with references, but I haven’t been running their prints or anything.)  The only lead on a babysitter I’ve been able to get down here was from a woman who looked suspiciously like a “lady of the evening” who solicited me as I biked through town with Dean one day. Hmmm.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Culture Shock, Kids, Philosophy, Puerto Viejo.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.