Flickr: moucri
Like the other dads here at EoT, I’ve experienced all the firsts: crawling, walking, talking, eating real food, going to school, etc. Those are all happy things. There are other firsts as well, one of them being getting hurt while at school.
Now, I’ve yet to experience anything dramatic with my oldest just starting kindergarten this year, but there have been a couple of incidents that I wish were acknowledged by the teacher, specifically when she came home with scratches on her back after the first day of school and then a red mark near her eye on the second.
In both cases, they were accidents, as I discovered through a grueling interview process with a five year old that likes telling stories. The first incident happened when they were playing tag in gym. Someone must have scratched her by accident. The second incident happened when she was walking by the swing set and another kid kicked her near the eye as she was swinging. Both incidents are bound to happen with a playground full of kids. However, it would have been nice to have someone at the school tell me the deal.
As parents, we want to shelter our kids and protect them with bubble wrap so they will never get hurt, never have a broken heart, never do anything stupid that will land them in a holding cell (like their fathers). However, we can’t. Then again, I read stories like this — about kids getting seriously injured without parents getting calls from the school — and I want to bubble wrap my daughter before she heads out to school each day.
The author of an op-ed has a point: with all the technology we parents and schools use everyday, why can’t their be some sort of notification system as to when something happens. While we don’t need to know about every trip or bump, we do need to know when a serious incident happens.
The last thing a school wants is me, finding out at the end of the day that my baby girl has an eye jammy. I’ll have to find the the little bastard that did it, put on my war gear and pull a…
