Responsibility.
It should be one the most important words in parenting, and yet it often goes ignored.
The other day I took the kids to the park. It’s a beautiful park complete with an enclosed tot lot for the little ones and an open park for the older kids just a few feet away. We are very lucky to live just five minutes from this park, and we spend a lot of time there.
On this particular Monday, it was much busier than usual. Apparently most of the world had Monday off for New Year’s Day, so it was packed. When my kids ran off in different directions, it was far more stress inducing than an average day at the park would be.
As per usual, I concentrated on my three year old son and checked in with my five year old daughter regularly. Although she can certainly handle all of the play equipment at the tot lot with ease, I like to make sure that she’s engaged and making good choices.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a little boy (no more than 3 years old) taking sand from the sandbox and dumping it on the ground near the play equipment. His mother was glued to her Blackberry. On any other day, I would be the mom who provides the gentle redirect to raise awareness that sand all over concrete is slippery, but on this particular day I was stretched too thin.
I made a mental note to remind my son to walk carefully in that area.
Before I had a chance to provide that reminder, I noticed a girl telling my daughter that it’s ok to climb up the slide. While this is the preferred method of slide play for our kids in our own backyard, they know that they need to go up the ladder and down the slide at the park. With that many kids around, someone is likely to get hurt with kids climbing up and sliding down at the same time. And it’s simply not fair to the kids waiting patiently at the top of the slide. I walked over to her to remind her to climb up the ladder and praised her for following directions.
Responsibility.
But in that moment (no more than 30 seconds), my son took off running and slid through the sand. The screams echoed through the park as his mouth slammed into a metal step that leads up to his favorite fire truck. Blood was pouring from his mouth, all over his sweatshirt, all of his hands, all over the two of us…
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