Sami’s Blog: Avalon Sprained Wrist

Do you have a vivid memory of a childhood mishap that left you with a broken bone or a busted body that needed stitches? My 13-year-old girl does. It was a regular night when my Avalon begged me to take her out for a treat at McDonalds. I told her and my other 2 sons they could get a little something if they rode their bikes and scooters to Macas. In the moonlight. Without parents supervising them. This was a crazy concept in our home of routine. It was as if I had given my kids a million bucks. They started screaming and shouting in joy and ran out to grab their wheels.

My husband was unimpressed and said it was a bad idea to let them go at night. I promptly shot back at him that we are helicopter parents and it was high time we let our kids have some freedom. What could go wrong? But something in me told me to follow my tribe secretly in my car as they set off on their Maccas mission. All was going well when my daughter’s old-fashioned scooter began to wobble and next minute she was impersonating roadkill on the bitumen. 

Then my 10-year-old fell off his bike because he was looking at the human roadkill in the form of his sister. I came out of hiding and parked my car and sprang to the kid’s side. We had to stash the bike in bushes because I could not fit it in my boot. Then I was worried the bike would get stolen, so I left the kids to guard the bike and drove home to get my husband to bring his ute back to the accident scene. His face was a distinct shade of red. We went back and scooped up the bleeding kids. My daughter was crying and told me I left her to be murdered. The drama!

I told the kids to have a nice warm shower and go to bed.  Because sleep fixes everything, right? Fast forward to one am that morning and my daughter was tapping my arm in bed and telling me she was in a lot of pain. I knew I was in for a long stint at the hospital waiting to get her wrist x-rayed. The Emergency Ward is not for the faint hearted. One lady had cut her middle finger and it was heavily bandaged. The local was clearly very drunk and was cracking herself up with laughter giving the finger to anyone who walked into reception. My daughter received quite the education. 

The hospital whipped her into the protective pediatric ward and x-rays showed it was just a bad sprain. We drove home at three thirty am. We got Maccas on the way back of course and then collapsed into bed. And I would like to say to my husband: yes you were right.