Tag Archives: children and mortality

The tipping point

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We have a super little park about 3 minutes stroll from our house and If the weather is dry then we can be found there most days. We live in a neighbourhood with no through roads making it a pretty safe walk; as such I place a degree of trust in F to ride his bike ahead as long as he always stops at the curbs.

I’m proud to say he’s good at this, and for the most part, very aware of road safety; but at the end of the day he’s still just 3 years old – energetic, excitable, distractable.

The other day we were racing home (him Lightning McQueen, me Francesco Bernoulli and the baby Jeff Corvette – characters from Disney Cars if you don’t posses a child within the target demographic) when he darted out into the road without thinking. No harm done, no traffic, but that’s not exactly the point is is?

I lurched forward and pulled him back onto the pavement; I explained why what he did was so dangerous and told him he needed to be very careful of cars or he might get ‘squished‘. On reflection this was perhaps a slightly more graphic choice of adjective that I should have used, but one that stopped him in his tracks.

‘And then would you go to the shop and buy a new me?’

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