Overheard at the playground

Don't say it...

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“Make a safe choice!”

This phrase comes to you direct from Influencer Central.

(The child in question was lying face down on the swing rather than sitting on it.)

You can say “I don’t think that’s a good idea” or “Stop that right now,” when you check in every once in a while and something really crazy is going on, like throwing sand at other children’s heads or tying ropes around their necks.

But embedding the spurious, joy-killing notion that safety is the guiding principle on the playground (and by extension, life) will not tend to your child’s well being. Or safety.

For your child to develop properly with good balance, risk assessment, and so on — he simply must do some things that you, a fully grown adult (not to say middle aged sedentary mom) will find unreasonable if not heart-stopping.

If you don’t want your child to have low muscle tone, klutziness, the tendency to barge into things, and bad balance, here are some important activities, especially on a playground (a place designed for safety, unlike the playgrounds of my youth, surviving which is a life achievement):

• Jumping from heights

• Climbing UP the slide (your 18-month-old needs to be rescued because he doesn’t yet know that a big kid is bombing down) — it is okay

• spinning

• hanging upside down

• swinging hanging upside down

• swinging standing up

• balancing on narrow things

• climbing the swing set

• mastering the monkey bars (I am a bit perturbed that kids don’t seem to know how to use monkey bars — please let them know and even demonstrate the key: you have to swing forcefully from one to the other, not sort of hang there; it’s the momentum that gets you across)

It is a good thing for children to fall down, scrape knees, konk their heads, feel dizzy, and cry. I actually remember my father (who was reasonably fit, playing tennis all his life, but hated feeling dizzy) would admonish me not to spin around. But deep within myself I knew I had to, and falling down afterwards was great fun!

Remember that confidence I always mention? Because you know your child must play hard for his own good, you will resist social pressure to call out detrimental phrases like “make safe choices!”.

Summer Swingers! ~ Vernon Thomas

As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, which come from my experience of escaping feminism to enjoy the gift of 45 years of marriage, seven children, and more than a score of grandchildren, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!

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For the longer version:

My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory