I made much more of a deal out of this than G. It all happened very smoothly. G tried to climb a new monkeybar she has not made, got to a scary part and said “i cant make it”. I said to her clearly “if you fall, i will catch you!” She acknowledged, I spotted her, she moved on, and cleaned it.
An adult would take so much more dialog to accomplish this understanding; G just said ok and off she went. When she stumbled, even before i grabbed her, she really didn’t look afraid…just a little discomforted by the effort of hanging. She hasn’t had a good fall yet. She dropped a 10lb weight on her toe today after trying to lift it…but that only hurt about 5 minutes.
I am so relieved she has not fallen. I am so aware of the important lesson she needs to learn. It may have serious consequences, how can it not to properly impart in her a robust fear of gravity? She’s lucky to have a very empathetic teacher, but i hope she does not lose faith in me along with some of her IQ when her first big digger finally happens.
Once upon a time a long time ago in 1974, in a distant galaxy called Rochester, a Jedi Knight named Jason climbed to the top of the Monkey Bars and claimed to be King of the Hill. However, he was unable to come back to terra firma without incident! In this time, the incident was a fall from a great height, about 3 meters, landing onto a concrete pad. This was so sudden and so violent, that not even an “ouch” was heard. An immediate visit to the ER with the unconscious knight then ensued. The Doc said, “he’ll be ok.” But was he? One will always wonder??????????????????? Please, dear Lord, let it not happen again.
i remember parts of that, maybe they are just memories of memories at this point, but i still have a sense of looking up and seeing the bars getting further above me and hearing clang clang clang thud. i did not recall the concrete pad part – can’t believe they ever made em that way! did i fall right off or was i up there screwing around for awhile? i remember falling almost as soon as i got to the top.
You fell quickly. I was at the base of the structure and watched you go clang clang clang thud. It was horrible. We raced back to the Wise’s house with Dad yelling at you to try to make you cry so he would know you were alive. Years later, there were certain structures that made me hold my breath when our kids would climb on them. Like you’ve written about G – you have to let them go, but sometimes it’s hard!