Yesterday a woman I know was telling me how her youngest child had climbed up into a chair only to launch himself head first at the floor a short time later. The kid happened to land on the top part of his forehead and give himself a nice silver dollar sized bruise, but otherwise appeared fine. While he could have been hurt much worse, ie a concussion (or if you’re a mother scared of highly improbably events maybe even a subdural hemorrhage), this woman told me he seemed to be just fine and acting normally over the next several hours.
This woman however was a completely different story. The fall freaked her out. She told me that she started crying, and that she had to fight tears for the rest of the morning. She spent the whole morning worrying that the kid’s brain was bleeding into his skull and that he’d fall asleep and never wake up. She called the doctor’s office to tell them what had happened, and see if she needed to bring the little tyke in for a check up. When she put the guy down for his nap, the anxiety crept up on her and she couldn’t shake the fear that something was terribly wrong. She told me she couldn’t stop checking the TV monitor showing him sleeping in his bed.
As she is telling me this, she’s got the kid with her, and he seems totally fine. Of course the bruise is quite striking, but he’s a boy. I figure that’s just a sign of a kid exploring his environment and learning about consequences. Throughout the whole tale she’s telling me I have an amused smile on my face. When she gets to the part about her fears of traumatic brain injury I actually laugh out loud. This does not endear me to this woman, but I really can’t help myself. The absurdity of it all is too much.
As she’s getting angrier and angrier with me for not sympathizing, I point out to her that the kid is clearly fine. But I wonder about this woman. What’s going to happen when something truly serious happens to this kid? Boys explore, boys get into situations that are dangerous. Boys get injured. Boys go to the emergency room. Between now and the time this kid becomes an adult in 16 or so years, there’s a high probability he’ll need stitches, a high probability of at least one broken bone, and a near certainty of at least one concussion. If this woman had her way, her kids would live in a padded room until they moved out of the home. I can’t say that’s conducive to raising a well rounded and grounded adult. A wimp scared of his own shadow, never willing to take a risk, well now, that’s highly probable.
