My parenting style is a little loose. I like to give my son the freedom to explore his world and become his own person without much influence from me and his father. This isn’t because we don’t care about him and don’t want to spend time with him. It’s because we’re desperately afraid of being helicopter parents and keeping him in a protective bubble his entire life. We’re of the mindset that the more he learns and discovers through his own devices the more well-rounded he’ll be.
Sometimes my husband thinks I’m a little overprotective and paranoid about Travis’ health and well-being. I tend to check him a few times each night to make sure he’s still breathing. We’re well beyond the age where SIDS is a constant concern but I have an irrational fear that one day we’ll find him in a permanent sleep. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other parents had similar fears.
The other night Travis stated that he wanted to play in Mommy & Daddy’s room and wandered out of sight. Brandon and I were both home due to a snowstorm and we’d become quite complacent and tired of chasing Travis around the house. Sure enough, Travis took himself upstairs to play in our bedroom. Neither of us followed him because we didn’t want to encourage the use of our bedroom as a playroom. We weren’t terribly worried that Travis would get himself in any trouble because he’d been going up and down the stairs without our assistance for several weeks.
A few minutes later, when Travis realized we weren’t coming upstairs to play with him, he must have decided to come back down to where we were. That’s when it happened. Travis fell down the stairs. It didn’t register at first. Brandon and I heard THUD, THUNK, BUMP, CRASH as Travis lost his footing and gravity assisted him to the bottom of the staircase. The bloodcurdling scream Travis let out was the most awful sound we’ve heard yet as parents. The first time, the ONLY TIME, we didn’t watch him on the stairs was the time he lost his footing and fell. Those first few minutes were chaos as we tried to determine if Travis was screaming in pain, in fear or a bit of both. We felt for broken bones, looked for bruising and tried to calm a very startled 28-month old. Luckily for us, Travis only damaged his confidence. And we can rest easy now because he won’t go near a set of stairs without us.
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