Thu 31 May 2007
Let’s talk slide etiquette. While at the playground, do you allow your kids to climb up the business end of the slide, or do you force them to go up the ladder, as God intended?
On the one hand, I can see the value of maintaining an orderly traffic pattern. Banning the up-slope climb reduces the incidence of collisions and falls. It’s definitely safer. On the other hand, the whole damn jungle gym is unsafe. Given that, is it really so bad if the kids climb up the slide? I mean, no other section of the jungle gym has a one-way rule. Isn’t orderly play an oxymoron? Doesn’t it conjure up pictures of the kids in A Wrinkle in Time bouncing their little balls in unison?
The way I see it, you’re doomed no matter what you do. If you allow your kid to climb, it’s unfair to the kids whose parents are making them obey the rule. And if you impose the no-climbing rule on your child, it’s like an indictment of those parents who are letting their kids climb with impunity.
Here is a modest proposal: Since I have so many other disciplinary issues to address with my boys, I would love to throw caution to the wind and let them play as they will. Can we all agree to refrain from interfering unless someone’s child is in imminent danger of serious physical harm? At least, until the kids start doing this?
Speaking of the playground, the New York Times reviewed two books about nannies this weekend, and the reviewer recounted an incident from Lucy Kaylin’s And Nanny Makes Three as follows:
One day when her Jamaican nanny, Hy, had to take a few hours off, Lucy Kaylin, the executive editor of Marie Claire, took her children — 5-year-old Sophie and 2-year old Owen — to the park herself.
Aware of the nannies eyeing her from the playground’s benches, she gave Owen a hearty push on the swing to show the spies how fun-loving a real mother could be.
Glancing back at the benches, expecting approval, she saw “nothing but horror.” Whipping her head around, she saw her son dangling, his head nearly smacking the ground.
“My experience in this area was so limited — the park being Hy’s realm — that I didn’t even know Owen was too young for this much speed and height, and that the bucket-style swing would have suited him better,” Ms. Kaylin writes.
Ms. Kaylin is clearly an idiot, but not (only) because she nearly decapitated her kid on the swings. She’s an idiot because she thought that this sort of “I’m so removed from my kids’ lives that I can barely find the playground on a map” pose would contribute anything useful to the public discourse on child care. What really burns is that this anecdote will be interpreted as evidence that we “corporate types” (i.e., working parents) are deficient mothers. For the record, I have a full time job, I’ve visited the playground more times today than Ms. Kaylin apparently has in her life, and I have never given my toddler a head injury on the swingset, even if I do let him climb backwards up the slide.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:01 am
I let my kid climb up the slide, walk down the slide, slide head-first down the slide, whatever. The only time I’ll intervene (by which I mean “yell”) is if he’s about to slide on top of a smaller child.
Of course, our local playground is on the campus of a run-down DC school, and is almost always deserted when we visit in the evening or on weekends. My big concern now is that my four year old has learned to read, and the slides he’s misusing are covered in four letter words. I worry about that, and broken beer bottles. The dangers of conquering the slides a la Mt. Everest seem pale in comparison.
May 31st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
The definitive answer: Anything goes on the slide unless a child is trying to slide down. The slider has the right of way over the climber every time.
My biggest safety concern at the playground is my 3yo DS’s wistful daydreaming while walking backwards at the top of play structures with gaping spaces in the rails. More than once I’ve caught him backing off a climbing wall platform while composing a sequel to the Thomas theme song in his head. Today, he almost fell down the basement stairs while trying to combine the lyrics of “God Bless America” and “I see the Moon.” He is growing into an absent-minded professor with corduroy elbow pads and a fabric softener sheet stuck to his pant leg . With luck, his sister will always be around to scream, “Chahls! Pull it together!”
June 1st, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Anything goes, as long as other people’s children are not in danger. Of course, I’m the mom whose kid DID get hurt by another child horsing around. Seriously, if your kid knocks his noggin, that’s your business. When your kid cracks my kid’s head, then now it’s MY business.
There is nothing more annoying than a 12-year-old crawling up and down the toddler slide, knocking little kids off, while his mother stands by with the “now Jason…let’s stop that please. Now Jason. Jason. Oh, Jason” mantra doing nothing.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:18 pm
At first, I tried to teach my little monster to always follow the rules and climb the ladder. After repeating myself probably five times in two minutes, I got annoyed and gave up. I’m sure I was one of those moms that confuses the shit out of their kids — when he’s climbing back up the slide and no other kid is coming down, I let him ’slide’ (hee-hee). But, if he’s going the wrong way up the slide and a kid’s coming down, I would correct him. He probably didn’t know what to do. Now that he’s old enough to understand, I still let him go the wrong way since he says he understands when he can and when he should not.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:44 am
When I was 10 years old, I slipped running up a slide, knocking out both my front teeth.
Two decades and countless hours of dental reparations later, I never let my kids go up the slide.