"Once your consciousness has been raised, it cannot be lowered"

My parenting journey, our home educating family and some other stuff here and there....


Sunday 24 May 2009

On the mend, on (the) edge

Thanks everyone for the healing vibes ;)
My leg is doing OK, I think.  I had the stitches out on Friday and it was mostly knitted together except for one bit where the hole was deepest. The nurse put on a wet dressing, which somewhat alarmingly, seems to have enlarged the gaping-ness of it.... Fingers crossed this is the right thing to be happening!

So, my recent brush with my blood, fat, skin and bone, and a degree of incapacity and pain, has really tuned me in to how fragile life is. And how a split second in time can change everything, for better or worse.

It's also changed the way I am dealing with the kids, in terms of risk and danger. Usually I leave 'em to it and deal with the (rare) accidents as they happen. People often comment how confident the children are when climbing, cycling, swimming and generally doing potentially injurious things. I usually feel it's because we' re not from the "Be careful!" school of thought. I want to foster confidence in them and allow them to trust their own judgement about their limits, I don't want to squash their sense of competence and adventure by constantly reminding them they might hurt themselves. 

Since falling, I have found myself feeling a lot more cautious and anxious about the children's safety. I've not been verbal about this with them. But I have found myself removing them, particularly M who climbs like a monkey, from situations where they could fall and damage themselves. I can't help visualising them harming themselves, which I never did before, and I don't seem to be able to turn off the caution just yet. Surprise surprise....we've had a fair bit of falling, bumps, bangs etc that probably wouldn't be happening if I didn't have this edge-y feeling going on.

I suppose it's natural to tune in to this worry, I just hope I can tune out soon too as I'm finding it pretty stressful feeling our world is unsafe and a threat to my little ones.  

3 comments:

Fiona said...

Glad you're feeling better. Hopefully the urge to wrap them in cotton wool will pass. I've had to learn to relax on the front, I've got better at it with each child. The only proper injury was caused by something so random - after all Anna's monkey impressions over the years her only break was from falling off a building block - LOL!

Annie said...

I'm so glad you're doing better too!

Your confidence will grow again as you heal and forget a little bit more about your injury. It's no wonder you're sensitive to the possible dangers in falling- look at those bloody pictures again woman!! That was so awful what happened to you! But I'm sure you'll see that while dangers are always possible, they aren't necessarily likely.

Sue-Ann said...

Nevertheless - there are times to trust our instincts and learn from our mistakes - like me letting Z chop apple until she chopped her finger - don't worry - lots of blood and a bit of a scare but all okay.