Column "Come off it, that's too high!" - When parents mean too well
The columnist is a cautious mother. Too cautious, in her opinion. But sometimes there's a trick to help you stay calm: close your eyes and trust that everything will be fine.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- blue News columnist Michelle de Oliveira says of herself that she is a cautious mother, too cautious in fact.
- Nevertheless, de Oliveira asks herself from time to time: Isn't it part of the job that her two children occasionally bump into each other, scrape each other and sometimes really hurt each other?
- It is undoubtedly a challenging balancing act between "You can trust your children to do that" and "You have to protect them from that", says the columnist.
The other day, when my daughter came home from kindergarten, she told me with wide-open eyes that a boy had injured himself and even had to be taken away by the ambulance.
He had fallen from one of the tree trunks and was bleeding from the head. I already knew what would happen next.
Shortly afterwards, my cell phone was vibrating almost every minute, with one message after another filling the kindergarten chat on Whatsapp.
The tree trunks and the sandpit are the highlights
Get-well wishes for the injured boy, updates from his mother - the wound above his eye needed stitches, but the boy was fine - and above all other parents who were upset about the tree trunks.
About the person: Michelle de Oliveira
Michelle de Oliveira is a journalist, yogini, mother and always in search of balance - and not just on the yoga mat. She also has a soft spot for all things spiritual. In her column, she reports on her experiences with the incomprehensible, but also from her very real life with all its joys and challenges. She lives with her family in Portugal.
About pieces of tree trunk that were used as a small climbing element in the garden of the kindergarten. You have to know that:
The kindergarten hasn't been around that long, and the outdoor area is still rather - shall we say - sparsely stocked.
The tree trunks are therefore more or less a highlight alongside the sandpit.
And of course, a child can fall off a tree trunk and scrape their skin.
"Take care of yourself!"
"My son has bruises all the time, they must come from these tree trunks," wrote another mother. I had to smile.
Just recently I had looked at my daughter's legs, full of scratches, abrasions and bruises and thought: wonderful, real summer children's legs.
But I'm a rather cautious mother myself. More worried than I would actually like to be. When I'm in the playground with other parents and their children, I'm one of the people who shout out most often:
"Watch out! Watch out, not so fast! Take it easy! No, come off, that's too high! Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!"
The stupidest accidents usually happen unexpectedly
I know from my own experience that the stupidest accidents happen when you don't expect them. A few years ago, I received a call from the daycare center. My son had fallen, he was bleeding heavily and I had to come immediately.
He actually had an impressive hole in his head, which almost made me sick to my stomach. Nobody knew how it had happened. It had happened in the nursery, just before lunch, and the children had been washing their hands.
So not a moment when I, as a mother, would have held my breath or shouted "Careful!". Not a dangerous situation that I should have warned about. It just happened. Just like many minor and major accidents just happen.
Isn't it part of the job for children to hurt themselves sometimes?
Of course I also think that obvious sources of danger should be eliminated, whether for children or adults. But isn't it part of the job for children to bump, graze and sometimes really hurt themselves? Should they be allowed to have their own experiences without being dangerously reckless?
Don't you have to have fallen down first to really understand why adults are constantly saying: "Be careful not to fall.
It's undoubtedly a challenging balancing act between "You can trust children to do that" and "You have to protect them from that". And I'm still leaning more towards the latter.
But I have a trick for more composure: sometimes just look away, close your eyes and trust that everything will be fine.
Not in dicey situations, of course, because I still shout as loud as I can: "Watch out!"