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Monday July 10 2006 03:50 PM
Last Thursday evening we went to the playground at Lakelands Park for the first time. It's a very nice playground with both a small and large jungle gym. As usual, Joshua (now 2 years old) decided to follow his big sister and climb on the large jungle gym. Specifically, he decided to climb a slanted metal ladder up to a 9 foot high platform. When I realized what he was doing, I did my best to spot him. When he was at the top, I couldn't even touch him, so all I could do was hope to catch him. He's been climbing ladders for several months now, but the sheer height had me very worried. When he made it to the top, I breathed a sigh of relief. A couple seconds later, Jennifer came over and said that he'd done it twice earlier while she'd been watching him. Right about then I noticed Joshua trying to start climbing down inside a metal tube ladder that went from a hole in the platform straight down to the ground. As I walked over to spot him, he missed the highest rung and fell 7 feet onto the wood chips below, hitting a few rungs on the way down for good measure! I let out an involuntary scream and ran over to the crying heap at the bottom of the ladder. He was very scared and upset but, amazingly, not injured at all -- not even a scratch or bruise! After a few minutes of comforting, he wanted to go climb the ladder again. We redirected him to the smaller jungle gym for the remainder of the evening. 
What about the broken bone mentioned in the title of this entry? Well, that would be Julia's left arm. She broke it on Saturday playing in the tot lot behind our house after her 5th birthday party. She jumped off a 3 foot high platform (a very tame stunt by any standard) and hit her elbow on a plastic slide on the way down. She was in a lot of pain when she tried to move it, so Jennifer took her to the ER. They X-rayed it and found a fracture at the bottom of her humerus (a.k.a. her elbow). She got a temporary splint for the remainder of the weekend and today she got a cast. The orthopedist said she's lucky. Most of the time they have to operate on fractures in that location but since the bone hadn't moved significantly, she just needed to wear a cast for the next 3 weeks. She finds the cast a little annoying but really likes the idea of people signing it.
It seems like there should be a lesson here, but I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps it's just an illustration of the limited effect parents can have on their kids' safety. In the end, chance has a huge effect. Next time, I probably won't let Josh climb such a tall ladder (if only for my own sanity), but I'll still let Julia jump off something 3 feet tall.
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