Fifteen month old Ian broke his leg this week and they put it in a cast this morning. I feel badly for my grandson, but these things happen. In some ways I feel more concern for his parents. If you have kids you know what I’m talking about: the times you had a mental lapse when you could always say “What if I had done this or hadn’t done that?” But, nothing is going to change the fact of whatever it is that happened, and beating yourself up on a guilt trip isn’t going to help either you or your child.
This stuff happens and hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20. I once thought I might write an article or a book entitled “Emergency Rooms of New England.” Our three children survived childhood and adolescence and have children of their own now. Whether their survival was because of our parenting or in spite of it we’ll never know.
But, in retrospect, the one thing I know is that my wife and I beat up on ourselves unnecessarily and without reason on some of those trips to the emergency room, thinking that there might have been something we could have done or not done to avoid those journeys.
As painful as this is for my daughter and her husband, I should tell them that it likely will be the first of other such occasions as their two young sons grow to adulthood.
If you have kids you know what I’m talking about.