Stupid stupid

[frogfacemcgee]

I just took my kids to the park. As we were leaving my four year old DS insisted on taking his bike, cue long struggle getting both bikes out of the shed and off we went. DS then fell off bike and bumped forehead in the park. I felt terrible and we came home.

Only when we got home and my DH (who has spent a child-free day doing work for a course) asked why DS wasn't wearing his helmet, did the idea of his helmet even occur to me! What the hell is wrong with me? I clearly can't trust myself to think sensibly. I'm feeling wretched so perhaps I am wanting to be flamed by confessing here as well ...

Don't beat yourself up about it. We all make mistakes and forget things. You won't do it again and presumably he's fine or you wouldn't be posting here. I can guarantee that your dh will and has screwed up before and will do so again so he should climb down from that high horse now and you should stop feeling guilty. You don't deserve to be flamed.

There is a lot of conflicting safety information regarding children and bike helmets. If they're older, in the road and going very fast or doing stunts definitely but thats not necessarily whats best for little kids.

We all do silly things without thinking - I once went to take 6month old ds out of his car seat after a 40 minute journey and realised I hadn’t strapped him in! Still get shivers down my back just thinking of it and it was over a year ago.
Don’t beat yourself up

Oh thank you all for being kind. It's just been one of those days, I think! DS is fine, thank you - apart from having a paddy that we came home from the park early 🙄!

I would also remind DS that if HE wants to ride his bike, HE needs to remembe4 his helmet.

I try to hang each helmet on the relevant handlebars to “remind” them

Ds fell off his bike when he was 3 while wearing a helmet. He still scraped the skin off his chin, nose and has a permanent scar on his forehead. There was a lot of blood and he had to get glued/steri stripped at a&e.

Please don't beat yourself up about it, op.
We've all done similar things, I'm sure. I drove off, without strapping dd into her car seat. My dh took dd out on her bike and she sailed off into a road. Both things scared us so much, we never made the same mistake again, but we don't feel guilty about it, we just learnt from it.