The absolute worst, though, was the day when SteelyKid was a baby, and Kate slipped on her way downstairs. Kate wound up with a bunch of painful bruises on her hip and back, and SteelyKid was none too happy, but there weren’t any serious injuries. As they were bumping down the stairs, though, I had a horrible image of sitting in a little room explaining to someone in uniform that no, really, she literally<\/em> fell down the literal<\/em> stairs.<\/p>\n This fear is almost certainly overblown on my part. The one time we actually did take SteelyKid to the emergency room (SteelyKid was sleeping on Kate’s lap, and when I came in Kate tried to stand up quickly and slipped, and SteelyKid fell on the floor), everybody was really nice, and there wasn’t a hint of any trouble. The doctor who looked at her didn’t even unstrap her from the carrier, just looked in her eyes quickly, complimented her overall cuteness, and recommended putting an icepack on the bump on her forehead. Doctors know better than most that kids get hurt in strange ways, and aren’t going to call the cops on everybody.<\/p>\n But, you know, fear isn’t always rational. And it’s not totally without basis– when my sister broke her arm falling off the monkey bars in second grade or so, my parents got a severe grilling from the emergency room staff. It didn’t help that she’d been running around barefoot on the unpaved road in our neighborhood, and had black bits of tar on her feet. My mother still talks about that. And that was thirty-ish years ago, before a couple of decades of scary news stories aimed at producing ratings-boosting fear, which in turn leads to strict and harsh policies.<\/p>\n So, you know, that’s the scary stuff that goes through my head when I’m almost dropping the toddler. Which I won’t do in the same way again, of course, but there are an effectively infinite number of stupid ways for the kids to get hurt, so it never really goes away. But just to end on a happier note, here’s a cute picture of the kids “scaring” us in a more cheerful way: by running up to the doors of my parents’ kitchen and yelling “BOO!”<\/p>\n I almost killed the Pip last week. By accident, of course, but I do mean that literally. His day care was closed for the day, so I took him out to the store to avoid a freakout when Mommy left. I was heading into the store with him in one arm and a hot cup… Continue reading On Fear of Parental Perception<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-steelykid","category-the_pip","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"BOO!\"](\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/files\/2013\/10\/sm_BOO.jpg\")
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