Sometimes I have a vision of the mum that I want to be, the mum that lets her children climb up slides and jump off of swings. I want to be the cool mum that doesn’t get flustered easily and lets her children have adventures and adrenalin rushes. I want to be able to watch them riding over jumps without worrying for their safety, without standing nearby with a first aid kit and a phone ready to dial 000.

At the same time, however, I don’t want to be the mother with a child who has a broken arm or leg. I don’t want my children to get concussions and I don’t want them to cry. I do want my children to be adventurous but careful, to be tough enough to handle a scraped knee but not reckless.

Squirm has started climbing onto everything she can, which is a developmental stage I know, but it does carry increased risks. For now I just try and stand nearby, ready to make a saving catch and hope that my reflexes are as catlike as I think they are. Somebody once told me that children will never get themselves into a situation, eg. on top of a cupboard, that they can’t get themselves out of. All I could think of when this highly educated person told me this was, ‘You don’t have kids.’

So here I am, and here I think I will always be, surrepticiously standing in the background, ready to catch a falling child yet letting them climb and of course trying to look as cool and unfrazzled as possible.

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Uncategorized by chelle