Everyone knows that what goes up must come down. Whether it’s a thrown baseball, house prices or a girl climbing a tree — at some point the thing that has been ascending will have to descend.
The real question is: How? Does it drop in a controlled manner, so to speak, like a baseball arcing into a waiting glove? Or does it plunge, like house prices or a 401(k) … or a girl from a tree?
It was just after noon when I received what mothers everywhere refer to as “The Call.”
“It’s about your nine-year-old,” said The Caller from school. “She’s injured her arms. I think she’s going to need some X-rays.”
In the minutes it took to dash to my car, I had time to reflect on the fact that there really is a downside to adventure and freedom — with emphasis, in this case, on the “down.” A child free enough to climb trees is a child at liberty to tumble down from them.
“I didn’t fall, I slipped,” she said through teeth gritted in pain, when I reached her.
To think I’d been happy my children went to schools where they’re allowed to take risks: to climb, to run, to throw snowballs and go sledding in winter! (Actually, I still am, but in those first anxious moments you can imagine my guilt and chagrin.)
Unfortunately, normal childhood entertainment — running, climbing, throwing things — is increasingly rare in American schoolyards. Partly because of the litigiousness of the culture, and partly because of the rise of the parental cult of Safety First, many schools will no longer even permit children to touch the snow that might drift into the playground.
There is probably no sharper division between modern parents than the invisible line that divides risk takers from those who believe that safety must come first. Both parties love their children and want to be good parents to them. Where they differ is in how they handle … everything.
Safety-firsters are quick to treat with antibiotics, never let toddlers go barefoot at the park, and insist on helmets and car seats. These parents often discourage climbing, unless children are secured in harnesses on a wall built for the purpose. They’re uneasy about diving boards and Ripstiks, and tend to scold boys who play with sticks.
Risk takers observe the 10-second rule for dropped food (which safety-firsters would throw out, “just in case”). They let their children run around barefoot and occasionally go biking unhelmeted. They give their children bow-and-arrow sets and BB guns, and if there’s a kid at the playground who has climbed up on to the roof of anything, it’s one of theirs.
Belonging to the latter group, I must have been subconsciously prepared for an accident, eventually. Still, it was a shock after some hours at the hospital to realize that the child had managed to break both her arms.
People keep asking her whether she’ll ever go back up in a tree.
“Duh,” she says, wiggling her casts. “Just as soon as I get out of these.”
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
