As a father raising a two year old son, I sometimes feel that I need to prepare Mason for real life. Now, obviously, he is a little too young to be teaching him small engine repair…or how to drive the tractor…or how to restrain yourself from cursing a blue streak across the yard after dropping a cinder block on your foot, but, in my humble opinion, it is never too late to teach him not to panic when something bad happens.
Like many kids, Mason loves to play outside during the day…or night…or whenever he feels the time is right and has a clear line of sight to the door. That kid is a quick one. Anyway, being the middle of winter with wind chills often below zero, the number of days that he is allowed to play outside are limited. So, one evening, Laura bundled Mason up in his snow pants, coat, snow boots, hat and mittens. I’m impressed he could even move looking like the Michelin Man and all.
Laura goes out to supervise and occasionally act as the power to his little blue sled (since we have no hills nearby). They were outside long enough for Mason’s cheeks and nose to turn a nice rosy red.
After having run up and down the driveway several times pulling a 35 pound child on a sled, Laura decided to walk back to the house. Mason, now seeing that mom was no longer able to give chase, made a run for it. He heads up towards the barn, is gone for a little bit, and comes back without his hat and gloves. So, after a long sigh, Laura goes looking for his lost articles. When she gets back to the house, Mason is standing in the driveway, white as a ghost, staring at his hand. As Laura approaches, she saw a little blood on his middle finger about the same time Mason did…at which point, he starts flailing his hand around. It kinda looked like one of the Funniest Home Video clips when an unsuspecting women has a large spider land on her arm…lots of screaming and flailing.
Once Laura got Mason settled down, took him inside to see how bad the cut was. Fortunately, nothing serious, it looked like a paper cut just deep enough to draw blood. But to Mason, his finger had been nearly cleaved off requiring THREE band-aids! One plain brown to cover the cut, and two Sesame Street to hide the first one.
I can see that I am going to have to work with him a little bit about not panicking when he sees blood. He IS a two year old boy after all, and if my childhood is any indication as to what to expect for hospital visits, he is going to have to get past this fear. I am sure he will have an opportunity to see me do something stupid, requiring me to get stitches in the near future. What can I say, I’m accident prone. Of course, Laura calls it “making poor decisions”, but I’m not here to split hairs. We can simply use that opportunity as a “teachable moment”.
