When you live in a rural area, you spend a lot of time in a vehicle to get anywhere. Your kids have to spend that time in the back seat, which is only a few inches away from you but remarkably out of reach.
You can eyeball them a little bit with your rear-view mirror, or do a death-defying head turn or a contortionist hand reach as you are driving to tend to them. Infants in their backwards seat are even harder to deal with, especially mid-scream.
One of my favorite parenting contraptions are the little mirrors that clip onto the visors or suction onto the windows. You can angle those anywhere irrespective of traffic and train them directly on your children.
This way, I can watch helplessly as Max screams while I drive down the road. When he gets a bit older, as with his brother, Gabe, the mirror will get more useful. I can entertain him with silly expressions or direct him to stop picking his nose.
And apparently give lectures.
I recently pulled out my trusty mirror the other day, and teenage Gabe cried, "Oh, no!" When I asked him what was wrong, in that panicky way that assumed I had left the diaper bag on top of the car roof, he explained that he was having a flashback to the several admonishments that I had delivered through that mirror.
Excellent. ;)
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