Adventure Playground
It’s our second attempt to drive to our latest favourite adventure playground. Our first attempt ended abruptly when the youngest started twisting in her seat and desperately reaching towards home. With each straining move backwards she looked redder in the rear-view mirror. Then she started crying, and then she started getting extremely angry. We tried questioning her, “What’s wrong? What do you need? Can you tell us? Just use your words.” The last phrase definitely being the one I feel most guilty for using - asking someone to use their words when they can’t is like asking someone to “just speak Danish” or any other language they don’t know, impossible and infuriating. Our middle child has taken on the mantle of ‘translator’ and can often work out what the youngest wants so tells us all to be quiet whilst she has a go, “Birds, you want to see the birds? Babies? Baby lambs? Barbie? Oh Barbie! Mum, she wants Barbie.”
We all know that we will be able to spend a lot longer at the playground if we collect the Barbie, so even though we are halfway there, we head home. It turns out that the eldest wanted some lipbalm, the middle one wanted her bag, and I wanted a jumper as well, so it was probably just as well.
The playground is busy, it’s a mid-week, summer holiday day, and although there’s a very fresh breeze blowing, there are children and exhausted looking parents everywhere. “Thank God for adventure playgrounds” I think, as I plonk myself down on a picnic table and unload everything I’m carrying. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what we’d do without them. We can easily spend a whole day at one.
This Summer we’ve been planning as we go. We decided that with the girls being at the stage they’re all at, a ‘holiday’ or any time away, would be the opposite of relaxing for my husband and I. Different beds equalls even less sleep, more meltdowns, anxiety leading up to the plane journey, anxiety about the plane journey back, different smells, tastes, checking the safety of places, heat… the list goes on. So, with a fair amount of resignation, we opted for a staycation SEN-style. That’s not just staying in the UK, but staying at home. I’ve taken a picture of everything we can do locally, and put it in a book, and then when everyone is having a good day, we look through it and see what we might like to do that week. To be able to always bank on an adventure playground being a hit is magical. There will be various dramas, but generally I will be able to sit down for at least ten minutes at some point. And this one has coffee, bonus.
There’s always some poor sod who seems to have it worse than you at the adventure playground as well. It’s a great reminder that even though we’re struggling away, things could always be worse.
It’s while I’m in this zen state of reflection that I notice the elder two walking back from the restaurant, a good 400meters away, and in another section of the park. They’ve somehow got out of the playground, headed over to the restaurant and now they’re now making their way back. It’s baffled me what they are doing and how this has happened.
I go to the playground gate to meet them and am met with a tirade of shouting, “We thought you’d gone!” my middle child gives me a hug and my eldest gives me a real telling off, “What did you do that for? You could have told us!”
It turns out they thought I had left the playground. I think back to the brief call I took from my GP and the fact that as it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to broadcast to the rest of the playground, I retreated to a nearby corner.
“Girls, I’ve been here the whole time. I would never go anywhere without you. Ever, ever.” The moment is forgotten quickly but it reminds me that it’s easy to forget their challenges when they look so at home and happy. And of course that I must never relax again, ever, ever.
