How Much Do They Need To Know?

I struggle with this question on a daily basis....finances, neighborhood goings on , my work issues, just my plain issues!.... How much do I tell my teenagers? What do they need to know and what don't they need to know?

The struggle came up again 2 nights ago in the neighborhood category. I live on a corner, and the lady who lives on the other corner beside me is our mail carrier; thus, she is privy to a lot of what is happening around us that I wouldn't normally know unless she told me. We're not an overly friendly neighborhood (or maybe it's just me), to the extent that I have been here 10 years now and don't know the names of the people directly across the street, 2 houses down or the lady catty-corner behind me who comes over every once in a while to see if I have seen one of her cats, all of whom have been here longer than me. Anyhoo, back to the subject at hand. J, the mail carrier, calls to me as DS and I are unloading groceries to tell me that there has been a rash of break-ins in the neighborhood the last month or so. She had her back door kicked in while she and her son were at home getting ready for bed. Other people have had break-ins through the back door while they were at home late evenings. It's apparently a group of older male teens, hopping fences and then taking lawn mowers, bikes or anything of value from the yard and trying to get in the house and grabbing what they can before getting caught, if someone is home. If no one is home, they go through the house to get stuff. So she wanted to warn me. And DS overheard.

Now my kids are 16 and old enough and savvy enough to know that this goes on. They know the people right beside me are drug dealers and are in and out of jail and have no business having the 5 little kids in the house that they do. They know I replaced our flimsy, original, 90+ year-old basement windows with glass block windows when we first moved in because of security issues. They know our doors have deadbolts and multiple locks because of security issues. They know we don't live in the best part of town and have to behave accordingly. But I struggle with wanting to protect them from thinking "oh my gosh, we're going to get broken into tonight!" because odds are, that won't happen. DS especially struggles with feeling safe. As a younger child, for a long time, he was "in charge" of making sure the doors were locked every night because he was afraid someone would break in and "steal one of us." For a long time - and he still might, I haven't checked lately - he slept with a steel crowbar under his bed, just in case. And for several years, since the drug dealers moved in (and they own that house, so they aren't going anywhere - except jail - anytime soon), both he and his sister have been pestering me about getting a gun. Uh, not gonna happen until they go to college at the earliest. Last thing I need is someone hearing a noise and a horrible case of mistaken identity.

Anyhoo (again!), I wish DS hadn't overheard and that he didn't feel the need to share this information with his sister. I have told them that we have multiple locks for a reason, that I am a light sleeper and will definitely hear someone coming over our fence (my bedroom looks out over the backyard and we have a 1-floor house), that the dog next door will bark his head off if someone comes in our yard (he barks at us until we talk to him and he recognizes our voice), that our fence top is spiky and can do damage to a fence hopper, that our fence is in not-the-best shape and will probably crash down and hurt the offender if they try to jump it, AND that I have been praying for many years that God will surround our house with His angel to protect us. I wish I didn't have to explain all this. I wish DS didn't feel the need to give me one of his golf clubs to have by my bed and a hammer on my desk, and to have another golf club by his bed. I wish DD felt able to spend a few early evening hours home alone, and I wish they could go back to sleeping well at night.

I wish I could just reassure them enough that they will feel secure again in their own home and that they could have the bliss of relative ignorance about this. But it will just have to take time, I suppose. And lots of prayer. Prayer for protection and security of house AND mind and prayer that the police will catch whoever is doing this. And mostly prayer that I won't have to "share" again more information about neighborhood goings-on that I would rather the kids not know.