12/11/2023
Hello and welcome to “Unspoken Playground Rule”. I created this page to raise awareness about playground rules that should exist. Our last visit to the local playground ended because I accidentally broke my 2.5 year old daughters’ leg and if I can prevent this from happening to just 1 child then maybe I can start to forgive myself. But yes you read that right and now you are probably wondering how it happened. My daughter is quite the dare devil and absolutely loves the “big kid” tube slides. The playground we visited that day was brand new so there were a lot of new and exciting things to distract her for a while but once she caught sight of the tube slides off in the distance she knew what she wanted to do next, and that was to go down one of those shiny tube slides. She had no problem climbing the ladder and making her way up through the obstacle course to get to the landing for the slides’ entrance but had to wait for mommy to catch up because despite being the same size as a middle schooler, I had a little trouble navigating the obstacle course so I was lagging behind. Once I reached my daughter I asked if she was ready to go but she hesitated and then shook her head no and said “I don’t like the dark”. It took a second to register what her issue was but once it clicked I noticed that this slide in particular had a key difference, it was metal and pitch black inside. All the other slides she’s ever gone down were plastic and despite being opaque, light still got through so you could see when the next turn was coming. With this slide being metal, you could see where the first turn was but after that it was pitch black. So I asked if she wanted to go down with me and she said yes and sat down on the slide. I settled in behind her and when we were all situated I asked once more if she was ready so when she said “yes” I pushed off and down we went. Unfortunately that morning when I was getting dressed I opted for sweatpants so friction was lost on me and we ended up going a little faster than either of us anticipated. In a split second my daughter put her foot down and the rubber on her sneaker acted like an emergency brake, but there was no stopping my frictionless butt and her leg ended up underneath me. I tried my best to readjust her leg in the pitch black darkness of the slide but it did not matter because the damage had already been done.
I found out later that this is actually very common and I was baffled by that fact because if it happens that often, why are there no warnings posted? Yes there is a rule that states “One person down the slide at a time” but the pictogram associated with that rule depict two children. There is also a rule that states “Adult supervision is required” so in my mind I was supervising my child as she went down the slide since I couldn’t see through it to know where she was.
So yes the main purpose of this page is to prevent this from happening to someone else BUT I also want to hear your horror stories and thoughts on playground rules that should exist because lets face it, as parents our sole purpose is to keep our children alive and safe. Us parents already have way too much going on in our heads so having warnings that make us aware of potential dangers makes our job of keeping our kids alive and safe soooooo much easier.
