Hard Falls

At my 6 year old daughter E’s school, there was an end of the year celebration. She was really excited to go and so was my 4 year old son C. We had to eat dinner quickly and head over to the celebration. It was quite the rush because E had a dance rehearsal to go to before her big performance over the weekend. We made it to the celebration about halfway through.

It was a full family affair since my wife and our 1 year old son L came along too. Everyone was looking forward to a good evening and E was really excited to see her friends. All of my kids wanted to run around and it was hard to keep up with them since after the school was open on the inside and the full outside was open as well. There were literally kids everywhere.

I’m always impressed with the school because they always set up different booths and events for the kids to do. There’s a lot of parent volunteers and some of the teachers and staff also stick around. There’s also a variety of food and snacks for the kids in case they get hungry. My kids had so much fun running around and doing everything. They especially had fun on the playground with their friends.

I’m trying to do less nagging and reminding as my kids are getting older. I’m not sure the constant reminders help because many times, they choose not to listen and keep doing what they’re doing even if it is dangerous. They were playing tag with some other kids and I saw my E trying to get away. She kept climbing out of the place structure and sliding down the side of a loadbearing pole. It was not somewhere you were supposed to slide down, but it was one of the faster ways to get away. She did it a few times and I thought it was really dangerous, but I decided not to say anything. I thought the kids were having fun and I didn’t want to interrupt. A few minutes later, she was sliding down for maybe the fifth time and somehow she fell from the top all the way to the bottom. She hit the ground hard with her back.

I went over there really worried and asked if she was OK. She said that she was and luckily her glasses didn’t break. We had just recently gotten them fixed. I still asked her to take a few breaths and to take it slow she ended up sitting up and standing up. When she started to move around, nothing hurt and I was relieved. So was she. That was a really hard fall and something that could’ve been avoided if she had been using the place structure the way that it was supposed to be used. Kids will be kids though. Sometimes they have to learn the hard way and I’m glad this lesson didn’t end up much worse for her.

A few minutes after that, I saw C running and balancing on the curb. He was running really fast and had decent balance honestly. Even though I really wanted to say something to him to slow down, I did not. Less nagging from me. A few seconds after I noticed him running along the curb, he slipped and fell down really hard. Luckily, he didn’t skin his elbow really badly.

Thankfully, the rest of the evening was uneventful. It was hard to probably the kids away from their friends and the event, but everything was already shutting down and it was time to go. Overall, the kids had a lot of fun and it was a really successful evening, despite some hard fall. Sometimes life is going to keep teaching the same lesson until someone learns it. Hopefully, my kids learn from this evening and even though I want them to have lots of fun, they can try to slow down a little bit.