Slide slide slippity slide
The playground where Crispian's party was this weekend is one that is closest to my house. Myles and I usually walk there several nights a week. At the end of our street there si a road into he park which connects to a trail that .60 miles later ends at the playground. It's a great walk, and Myles even runs almost half the distance (we see a lot of joggers on the trail).
Tonight we stopped at the park again for 2 glorious hours that were only interrupted by 10 minutes of sheer terror and nervousness on my part.
For a few months now, Myles has been fascinated with slides. His entire motivation for completing any obstacle or climbing thing on the playground has been to get to bigger and more complicated slides. He can still be content to play on the Little Tikes slides many of our friends have in their yards, and even the toddler-sized ones at the various playgrounds we visit. However, he has no fear of heights or challenges, which can be a challenge. The past few weeks, particularly since we have moved to this neighborhood and go to this playground all the time, he has been working his way toward progressively higher and more challenging slides. Tonight he was particularly driven, out-climbing three year-olds to play on the big kids' slides. After the initial shock of his flying down an eight-foot high spiral with giggles a couple of weeks ago, I have been mostly comfortable with his doing whatever it takes to be 5, 6, 7, 8 feet off the ground to experience however briefly some component of 32ft/sec/sec. To date we have had no accidents.
Now the inevitable challenge presented by the playground slides is not just getting to the top to go down, but also returning up the way you came. For many months I have been successful in keeping him from climbing up the slide, but now it is a most enticing challenge to him, one he cannot pass up.
If it were just slides like this one, I think I would be okay with it. He is quite skilled in climbing up a slide of this height.
However, after 2 false starts, Myles walked--not crawled,walked--right up this one. After he got so far up I could no longer spot him, and as he kept turing around to me as if to say, "See, Mom? I can do it! LOOK!" all I could think of was the last minutes of Bonnie Blue Butler. I wanted to close my eyes. I was so near crying until he safely reached the top that I almost cried out of relief that he didn't fall. I barely had a chance to recover, and then he DID IT AGAIN. I really teared up as he ran from my reach and sprinted up the slide.
After that, I don't know what stopped him from running up a third and fourth time. Maybe it was just "okay, mission accomplished, next", or I was able to divert him to something else. But I have not been so scared of what could happen to him in a very long time. And as he gets better at climbing (new motivation is that I told him he can't ride a merry-go-round until he can climb a playground ladder by himself), and jumping, and all those things children do as they perform contortions and acrobatics on these playgrounds that even the designers didn't even imagine, I hope I am able to keep my eyes open and not cry, and cheer him on through my anxiety.
Pass the Xanax, somebody, please.
Tonight we stopped at the park again for 2 glorious hours that were only interrupted by 10 minutes of sheer terror and nervousness on my part.
For a few months now, Myles has been fascinated with slides. His entire motivation for completing any obstacle or climbing thing on the playground has been to get to bigger and more complicated slides. He can still be content to play on the Little Tikes slides many of our friends have in their yards, and even the toddler-sized ones at the various playgrounds we visit. However, he has no fear of heights or challenges, which can be a challenge. The past few weeks, particularly since we have moved to this neighborhood and go to this playground all the time, he has been working his way toward progressively higher and more challenging slides. Tonight he was particularly driven, out-climbing three year-olds to play on the big kids' slides. After the initial shock of his flying down an eight-foot high spiral with giggles a couple of weeks ago, I have been mostly comfortable with his doing whatever it takes to be 5, 6, 7, 8 feet off the ground to experience however briefly some component of 32ft/sec/sec. To date we have had no accidents.
Now the inevitable challenge presented by the playground slides is not just getting to the top to go down, but also returning up the way you came. For many months I have been successful in keeping him from climbing up the slide, but now it is a most enticing challenge to him, one he cannot pass up.
If it were just slides like this one, I think I would be okay with it. He is quite skilled in climbing up a slide of this height.
However, after 2 false starts, Myles walked--not crawled,walked--right up this one. After he got so far up I could no longer spot him, and as he kept turing around to me as if to say, "See, Mom? I can do it! LOOK!" all I could think of was the last minutes of Bonnie Blue Butler. I wanted to close my eyes. I was so near crying until he safely reached the top that I almost cried out of relief that he didn't fall. I barely had a chance to recover, and then he DID IT AGAIN. I really teared up as he ran from my reach and sprinted up the slide.
After that, I don't know what stopped him from running up a third and fourth time. Maybe it was just "okay, mission accomplished, next", or I was able to divert him to something else. But I have not been so scared of what could happen to him in a very long time. And as he gets better at climbing (new motivation is that I told him he can't ride a merry-go-round until he can climb a playground ladder by himself), and jumping, and all those things children do as they perform contortions and acrobatics on these playgrounds that even the designers didn't even imagine, I hope I am able to keep my eyes open and not cry, and cheer him on through my anxiety.
Pass the Xanax, somebody, please.
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