It’s the call no parent ever wants to receive. Your heart sinks to the floor as you hear the tears panic in your child’s voice as they tell you someone has hit their car while they were driving on the road. You feel the same amount of panic and you want to break down and cry, but you summon all the strength you have inside of you to get them home safely and through this nightmare.

Now, let’s pause and talk about what a parent should do. As parents, we do everything we can to raise our children into responsible adults, but we cannot control the actions of others on the road. Things generally happen either one of two ways: your child is either at fault or not at fault. If they were not at fault, you feel angry and sad, but not at them—the other driver. You ask yourself who could have been so selfish and careless during driving to put your child in such a situation? Your mind is going through a topsy-turvy rollercoaster of emotions.

However, what if it is your child who is at fault? Personally, I strongly feel that in the heat of the moment, the role of the parents is to be rational and calm. Accountability should definitely be enforced, but first your child needs to feel safe admitting their mistakes to you. 

This is especially important when they first get a taste of the privileges of being an “adult”. I once heard a story that always stuck with me. The parent told their child that no matter what happens, no matter the hour of the night, they could always call home to get picked up. The parents assured them that even if they were up to no good, that their parents would just be one call away, with no judgment. This story resonates with me because I believe in gentle parenting, especially when it comes to encouraging our young adult children to be transparent with us.

In my own case, I cannot spill all the beans due to legal reasons, but what I will say is that I am incredibly grateful that my child is safe and recovering well from their injuries. After the accident, police and ambulance crews arrived promptly, and necessary evidence was collected. But the incident was not yet fully behind us. We still deserved to be compensated for damages. I contacted a personal injury attorney to advocate for us, someone who specializes in motor accidents in San Diego. Our lawyer took care of our case through the ins and outs of the legal and insurance systems. 

In the same way that, as parents, we are one call away for our children, knowing that a dedicated personal injury lawyer is one call away is emotionally reassuring in ways that words cannot describe. We did not want to relive the incident and trauma, and even more so, we did not want to jump through hoops with insurance after paying them what we do every month! 

With Christopher Villasenor, I knew that I had a San Diego Law Firm that was on my side through every step of the legal and insurance process, fighting for the compensation we deserved, which we received sooner than we anticipated. 

As parents, we might not have all the answers, but we sure know who to call.