I avoid playgrounds with my son even though there is a perfectly nice one less than a half a mile from our house.
Playgrounds create stress for me, much like everything else. I dread playgrounds — the social hub around here for parents. I’m not the “social hub” type.
When the playground is full I steer past it, simply to avoid adult interaction. I’m sure this is the complete opposite for stay at home moms who crave adult interaction after a long day with their brood.
But my brood are adults, many of them obnoxious adults. By the end of the day I’d rather have conversations that include words like “boo-boo” or “poo” or “dada” and “mama” and maybe even “doggie.” If only 2-year olds could drive themselves the playground. It would be much less stressful for me. I could hang with them and avoid their much more 
“mature” parental devices.
The real reason I hate playgrounds is I worry it will lead me to having to be a tough mom. I’ll have to the be the mom who says “No dear, that’s not your tricycle. You can’t play with it. Now lets go play on the slide. No. No. Let’s go. Nooooow.”
Then I’ll be the mother carrying a screaming, flailing toddler across the parking lot to the car in one arm with a toy car hooked over the other arm, wishing I could sink under the ground where no one could see me.
I don’t want to be the tough mother. That’s why I avoid playgrounds. But Tuesday it was nice out, so I went to one.
And right there was a boy with a tricycle and before I could steer him away, Jonathan saw it. And I had to say, ‘no…yadda, yadda, yadda.” I had to be a tough mama.
I hated it, not because I was embarrassed, but because I am weak. I’m a pushover. I’m a wimp. Like any mother I hate watching my child suffer.
Before long I was able to distract my son with a trip to the slide. Slide riding went well until she came along — cute girl in pink dress. She towered over my tiny boy and a question of her mother later revealed she was the same age as Jonathan.
Looking at her fat little legs, I wondered if it’s true that formula fed babies are fatter than breastfed ones and not in a bad way, just in a factual way. Then I wondered if I’d shortchanged my baby by breastfeeding him. Maybe I hadn’t put enough meat on his bones by not feeding him that fat-producing formula and now he’d grow up to be some brittle-boned little wimp.
Wham.
A second later he roared off the smallest slide there, bending his neck at the oddest angle underneath him. It was such an odd angle that for a moment I thought I had lost him. But he cried and I knew he was alive. He cried for less than thirty seconds, wriggled out of my comforting arms and took off toward one of the tallest slides.
Huh. Guess tough is in the blood, not the milk.
I guess he can be the tough one from now on because that spill dragged my wimp right to the surface.
And I marched right across that playground with a screaming toddler under one arm and a toy car hooked over the other arm. I was the “tough mom” who decided her toddler had had enough — or more accurately that mommy had had enough of watching her daredevil son careen off slides.
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