Saturday, November 14, 2009

Good parenting???

I was busy updating my previous post on MJ when I received a call from a close friend, K in a panicky voice telling me that we won't be meeting the day itself because her 15 month old daughter just fell off the bed, somersault stunt!

Boy! I had wild imaginations running through my mind thinking of the injuries that poor girl might suffer and all based on K's descriptions on how she landed on her face, flat and turned her neck 180" with a 'crack' sound! That 'crack' sound relaly made me worried to death that I didnt know what to say to K. I didnt want to make things worse for her so I just told her to be calm and since she's on the way to the Emergency Room, lets see what the doctors say and then only we shall take the next course of action. I was praying silently in my heart, hoping that everything would be fine.


Well, everything turned out well afterall.........PHEW!!!!!! The girl didnt suffer any serious injuries or whatsoever, just some bruises on her nose and forehead. Other than that, she's perfectly fine! That 'crack' could well possibly be the thumping sound effect from her hard fall onto the floor which might have been mistaken for a broken neck by the poor mother.....


Now....not bad for a recovery from a 15 month-old baby from a hard fall, as described by her mother! Falling flat-faced onto the floor with a somersault landing and only a couple of bruises on the nose and forehead? She'll grow up to be a very tough girl, I suppose....


Just when I hung up with K on the phone after she informed me of her precious daughter's super-fall, I received a MSN message from another friend telling me that she accidentally slammed her car door and injured her 5 year-old son's finger!


Sigh.......2 news on children accidents in a span of 20 minutes?....



Now...that really got me thinking.....


Are we, parents to be blamed entirely when accidents happen to our kids? I mean, it's not as if we are not careful or whatsoever in taking care of them but somehow, someway, sometime things just happen and we just cant avoid them....


Well, I've faced what my friends went through...



  • Zach rolled off the sofa when he was like 5 months old? He just rolled over and *thump* landed on the floor the minute I put him down and turned myself around...it all happened in like less than 5 seconds????

  • Zach fell off the edge of the bed a few times and landed on his palms.....worst was the one where he landed at the corner of the bed and got a bad bruise right at the corner of his eye! It was a mm away and he could just be blinded by it? I trembled, thinking how bad it could end.....

  • Zach fell off 2 steps from the stairs and bit himself on his lips - that was bloodied and I actually cried with him....his lips grew double the size immediately after the fall! That was when he was around 1 year old..

  • At 3, he fell down 4 steps from the whole flight of staircase....

  • He was 8 months old when he put his fingers near a candle and burned his skin on 3 fingers! *I happen to have a pic of that particular incident...*

    *notice those blackened fingers??...*


  • Roy fell off the bed twice in a week when he was barely a year old....

  • Roy - jumped and fell hard on a mahjung marble and bit his upper lip - that was pretty bad......

  • and countless fall here and there by both boys while playing at home, in the garden, playground, anywhere and everywhere.....swellings, bruises, cuts here and there....I could just go on and on on the injuries my kids suffered and definitely more to come....


So, are we to blame when they fall and hurt themselves? Well, as parents, we definitely feel bad and blame ourselves when accidents do happen to our children. But most of the times, they are just unavoidable, unexpected and unpreventable. Hence, we should not blame ourselves entirely *tho we may have heartaches seeing our children in pain; or hearing their deafening cries*.....what we could do is to try our best to provide a safe environment for our children and bear in mind that accidents might/could/would happen anywhere, anytime but not anyhow. As long as we ensure their safety whenever or whereever we may be, we might just prevent the worst from happening but sometimes we just cant avoid the unexpected ones.....



Accidents happen. Kids fall.

They need to learn from their own mistakes (or the consequences of their curiosity and inquisitive nature) and feel the pain to learn what danger is all about.... the word itself will not leave a mark in their head; but the pain definitely would!

1 comment:

Kristy Geraldine said...

sigh...look on the bright side. At least our children fall in front of us when we're around. can you imagine how much worse it could be if the accident happened when we're not home??? gosh...