Dad reflexes failed over the weekend

We got lucky.

My 2-year old is a climber, which I’ve happily encouraged. We went to a new park over the weekend. He naturally gravitated to the biggest play structure with a tall slide and a rope net to get up to the landing of the slide. The landing was about 10-12 feet high.

Youngster climbed up the rope net onto the landing and slid down once, twice… but on time #3 he slipped while swinging his foot onto the landing.

I had prepped myself to catch him if he fell backwards but to my horror he bounced off a rope and then fell through the rope net under the structure the whole 10-12 foot height. With the rope net in between us, there was no way to get to him in time. He landed on his back on the wood chips of the playground.

And in that moment I was scared out of my goddamn mind.

But. Fortunately. We got lucky.

I say we got lucky because:

• his landing was perfect. His lower back took the contact and then transferred the momentum to his upper back and neck, in the way martial artists train to fall.
• the ground was a thick bed of wood chips that clearly absorbed enough of the energy
• the impact on him caused him to bite his tongue and……that’s it. He cried, of course, and bled a bit from that small wound, but after 20 minutes or so had normalized and was ready to try the rope net again. I let him, holding on to him lightly this time, in support of him moving past the creation of a deeper trauma response than what he already had just gone through. And he did the route 2 more times.

It’s been two days since then. A healthcare professional checked up on him yesterday and gave a thumbs up. Youngster has gone on with life like nothing happened. I’m the one still processing the fear and horror. 😂 so it goes.

I will say my reflex blind spots have humbled me a bit. I’ll still encourage adventure but I’ll be making a bigger effort to figure out how I can reduce risk and catch what I might be missing.