Last week, our family learned a couple of lessons the hard way. Honestly, they weren’t new lessons, just re-iterated through an unfortunate accident.
As I pulled into the driveway from work last week, my husband and two kids were playing in the driveway. Preston, age 5, was riding his big wheel and was going as fast as he could. We all stopped and talked for a couple of minutes, and Emory, age 2, followed me in the house. It wasn’t long after that I heard an odd scream. I was in hopes that it was a scream of fun, but my heart knew differently.
I opened the door to a devastated Daddy holding Preston who was bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth with a huge goose egg forming on the back of his head. Instincts took over, and I began cleaning up Preston and getting the blood to stop. I still wasn’t sure of what happened, but I could tell by the sadness in Josh’s eyes that he felt that it was his fault.
As I was caring for Preston and checking out what I feared was a broken nose, something strange began happening to me. I felt an overwhelming pass-out sensation. As I looked into Preston’s eyes, it’s like the pain that he was feeling had transferred directly to my heart. I asked Josh to quickly bring me some orange juice, and all I could think was, “I have to be strong! I have to be strong!” After drinking the juice I felt better, and started forming a plan. After a call to the doctor, and assessing the situation, Josh and I decided against a trip to the Emergency Room.
About an hour later, Preston was back to normal thankfully, and we were eating dinner talking about the event.
So, what actually happened? Josh pushed Preston on his big wheel to go extra fast. The big wheel did a wheelie, and Preston’s helmet-less head came crashing down on the pavement with the handlebars crushing his nose.
We all learned one big lesson and Preston was the one that pointed it out. “Next time, I should probably wear my helmet,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Ya think?!” was the first thought that came to my mind. Generally speaking, if the kids are on their bikes or scooter, our rule is that they wear their helmets. Our newly revised rule includes the big wheel, too.
A couple of other life lessons that we learned from this –
• The pain that comes with hurting your own child on accident is a terrible, gut-wrenching pain. That pain lasts longer than the physical pain of the accident.
• Moms have an unexplainable connection to the pain her child feels which explains the feeling to pass out.
A week later, we are happy to report that Preston’s nose appears back to normal. He drew a picture as a reminder of the accident.
Have you learned similar lessons with your children?
Julie Swink is a Sr. Marketing Specialist for Texas Health Resources and Mom of two.
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