Skinned Knees

Being a parent to boys is very different than being a parent to girls. The average experience for girl dads is that you wake up to a pleasant morning with your daughter. She neatly gets ready without tearing up the room. The has all of her meals and doesn’t make a huge mess at the table. Then at night, she tells you she loves you and goes to bed. This is not the average experience for boy dads.

My 4 year old son C has limitless energy. So does my 1 year old son L outside of his two naps a day schedule. They are both fairly crazy and love running around. Since the weather is much nicer now, we spend more time outdoors and sometimes in shorts. Without the protection of longer pants, we are now in the era of skinned knees - any fall can lead to it.

On one particular day recently, C was outside riding his bike around after school. He has this habit now where he likes to slide to a stop because it looks cool to him, similar to how a race car skids to a stop while turning. He also jams the breaks to really get into the skid. It’s all fun, but bikes are not cars. There are only two wheels and the back wheel slipped out from underneath C. He ends up with a skinned knee, but he doesn’t usually cry about those anymore. He gets up and keeps going.

Then later on that day, L was outside wobbling around. He is having a grand time outside and starts to walk particularly fast. He walks like he is on a moving boat in choppy water and ends up falling down…and skinning his knee also. It wasn’t bad. He gets up and keeps going.

I am guessing this is my new normal. Both of my boys had skinned knees on the same day. Both of them didn’t care and just kept going. I know they’ll be fine and I’m glad they didn’t get hurt badly in any of those cases. Hopefully they will continue to get their energy out and learn not to have so many skinned knees in the process (and at least not on the same day).