It’s really easy to feel like you aren’t doing enough to protect your children. But how much is too much?
I say this as someone who takes his young nephews to the park on a pretty regular basis. My general philosophy is that there is very little that can go wrong on a playground. My job is to watch them to make sure that they don’t do anything too reckless and to encourage them to stretch their boundaries. But if a kid wants to climb a jungle gym that the warning label says he’s too young for, or he wants to climb up a slide the wrong direction, my reaction is usually “go for it.” And then I sit back and nervously watch them, idly wondering where the nearest emergency room is.
Of course, compared to the nannies and young mothers that I see at the park (and I’m not stereotyping here; in my experience it is incredibly rare for a man to take children to a park on a weekday morning) I am a reckless caregiver. They tell their children not to climb jungle gyms if it is at all challenging, not to walk up a slide backwards, not to play with sticks, not to run too fast…. And I’ve had them tell me to not let my child do those things, because it is dangerous and they don’t want their kids getting any bad ideas. On the one hand, I feel sorry for those kids; on the other hand, a part of me wonders if I am doing something wrong.
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