Ironically, one of my worst moments as a parent is intricately tied to one of my best moments. Have you ever heard the phrase, ?The road to hell is paved with good intentions?? I think this can also apply to parenting. The road to bad parenting is often paved with good intentions. With the best intentions, I woke up on a Saturday morning a few months ago with a plan. I packed a picnic and the loaded the whole family into the van. My DH and I stopped at the store and bought a variety of water toys. The next stop was the park. I was unpacking the picnic when my youngest son started squirting me with water. Without a thought or care in the world, I started squirting him back. He ran away as I expected him to do. What I didn?t expect was that he would run right into the park barbecue. Right next to our picnic table was a barbecue and never once did it occur to me that someone might have recently used it. I grabbed my sons arm and rushed him over to the water fountain where I ran cold water on his arm for ten minutes. I had many well-intentioned parents giving me bad advice. Half of my son?s forearm was burned and someone actually advised me to put mayonnaise on it. Instead of listening to the advice I did what I knew I should and ran the cold water over it. Next, I had my oldest son grab a bunch of paper towels and I wetted them. I kept them wet with cold water all the way to the hospital. On the way to the hospital I berated myself for my stupidity. I should have known that barbecue was hot or at least that is might have been hot. The emergency room doctor declared that he had 1st to 2nd degree burns (it takes a couple of days to be sure blistering makes it 2nd degree) but it would have been a lot worst if it wasn?t for the first aid immediately applied.
This leads to one of my best moments as parent. Years earlier I took a series of children?s? health, safety, and nutrition classes. I didn?t need the classes for my degree, but I thought that they would be informational for parenting. Included in those classes was a two-day CPR and First aid course. I really didn?t think I would need to use those skills but I wanted them just in case the moment every came. Because of that course I knew exactly what I needed to do when my son was burned.
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