Risk & Reward
Risk & Reward
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because
of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor
forsake you."
Deuteronomy 31:6
I
was brave enough to cliff dive off the jagged rocks of an island’s short cliff
in Palau into the mysterious depths of ocean waters below, but terrified to
drive the Southern California freeways to bring my newborn son home from the
hospital after his delivery. My husband would have no part of the cliff dive,
but easily jumped into driving me, and our newborn out of the hospital, diving
headlong into the torrent of cars flying down the freeway at speeds exceeding
80mph. Go figure.
This
Father’s Day, my brother-in-law, Maw Maw, and I sat for a long while reminiscing
and ruminating about parenting and levels of risk and permissiveness. Tales
flew and memories had us rolling in laughs over kids body surfing on
skateboards trailing fast behind speeding bikes by clinging to ropes, football
tackles that ended in ER visits, late night parties that ended up on lawns,
overseas adventures in the dangerous traffic of China and Italy, cross-state
car rides for late teen adventures, and running with the bulls as adults. These
were some of the amazing risks our parents allowed us. And we lived.
Then we spoke of how tremulous it feels to allow
our 8 and 9 year-olds to use “real knives” to cut meat. How quickly car seat
and crib designs have changed in the short decade we have been parents, causing
a design used with the first child to be nearly illegal to use with the second.
How much better it is to teach kids to ski as young children when their center
of gravity is low and the fall is not as bad. And as these conversations go
with so many other parents, my own ruminations rolled to the rapid increase of
helmet use for kids on all wheeled toys, and the significant changes in
children’s cartoon content from the TNT-anvil laden Road Runner antics, when I
was a child; to the use of cartoons to teach Biblical events, environmental
awareness, and healthy habits, now. Often, if I could replicate this picture of
my son in styrofoam, for my son and daughter, my overprotective
I’ve-seen-too-many-kids-in-OT-getting-rehab-from-injuries-mother-heart totally
would. I would place them in a box, protect them with heavy soft padding, give
them each a binkie, and keep them little, innocent, sweet, safe, and adorable
forever. To some extent, my husband might too. His eagerness to leave the
hospital came from experience in medicine. He weighed the risk of his child contracting
some virus from the hospital, versus California freeway traffic possibilities,
and favored the risks of traffic over viruses.
After
all this talk of risk, today we took the children to an indoor trampoline park.
My niece was thrilled and from the joy of her prior experiences. She pumped up
our children with her eagerness for the trapeze flying, tight rope walking, and
dodge ball areas all enhanced by trampoline bouncing. An indoor park obviously
designed for the modern parent-child dynamic. This is a foam block filled,
walls padded, college student staffed, trampoline, trapeze, ball-playing
bonanza. Safe risk. With an emphasis on safe
and an injury waiver to mitigate and pre-litigate any risk. Within 2 minutes of
hitting the trampolines our dear, sweet, excited niece had sprained her ankle
and her fun was done for the rest of the day. Our cautious son braved the tight
rope, avoided the trapeze, and spent the last 10 minutes bouncing on his one
favorite trampoline right in front of me. Our more adventurous daughter climbed
rope ladders, and tight ropes like a monkey, and flew on the trapeze like she
has a Flying Wallenda in her genetic ancestry.
