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Fly Me To The Moon, Unless Mommy Says No

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Is Disney World's Splash Mountain a harmless kids ride or a plunge into hell? It all depends on your frame of mind.

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By MICHAEL WINTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 24, 2009

Raising children in a mixed marriage can be a challenge.

Each spouse has a distinct parenting philosophy based on his or her cultural traditions, personal history and individual perspectives. Compromise is, of course, the key to forging a successful partnership in such cases, but some differences are more easily reconciled than others.

Religious preferences? Racial divides? Political entrenchments? These are minor quibbles compared to the single-most divisive issue facing parents today, something I call "The Calamity Conundrum." It's the regrettable circumstance parents find themselves in when one partner has a vastly different idea of what constitutes reckless endangerment than the other.

For instance, one parent (usually the mother) might insist her child wear a helmet when playing on the swings, while another (usually the father) might think nothing of hydroplaning his kid down a Slip 'n Slide at near-supersonic speeds in an effort to garner neighborhood fame as the sire of "the fastest squirt south of the Suwannee."

The wider the safety divide, the greater the likelihood that conflicts will arise when Susie demands the training wheels come off her bike or Tommy requests rockets boosters be welded onto his homemade hang glider.

Our family is, unfortunately, one such mixed household. Oddly enough, of the many things my wife and I discussed before marriage, I can't remember a single conversation about our views on risk assessment and management. If we'd had one, I might not have been as surprised as I was by her reaction to "The Flip," a maneuver of epic grace and sublime grandeur my daughter and I perfected over an intensive 20-minute training session.

It began as a simple pony ride, a bouncy little jaunt on my knee that left her giggling but otherwise unimpressed.

"Bounce me higher," she instructed, a request I judged to be both prudent and reasonable.

"Higher it is." I crossed my legs and slid her down to my foot, thus nestling her at the end of a fulcrum capable of more dramatic upswings. This time instead of merely bouncing up and down, I was able to launch her several feet into the air, much to her delight and my satisfaction.

"Higher!" she commanded. "As high as you can!"

Such challenges cannot go unanswered. The cohesion of the family depends upon parents establishing their supremacy in all things bounce-related, and so, being the responsible parent that I am and desiring maximum parent/child cohesion, I kicked up as hard as I could.

Now I'm not one to brag, but the effect was impressive indeed. My daughter sailed up and over my right shoulder, did a perfect forward flip and landed on the bed behind us.

"Awesome!" she declared. "Do it again!"

And I did. With each successive flip, our poise and grace increased until we were poetry in motion. I was contemplating the logical next step in our aerial ballet — a double somersault with a full twist into a half-pike, when my wife walked in. I'm not sure I can translate into words the precise sound she made, but I'll try: "Waaaahhhhaaarrreeeyewwwwudoing??!!!??"

Needless to say, that was the end of the pony rides. Since then I've been accused on numerous occasions of "trying to get our daughter killed." There was the time I let her push the lawnmower around the back yard. It wasn't actually on, mind you, and I was doing most of the pushing, but the odds of her catching the "mowing bug" and sneaking out one night to crank up the old Toro to give the yard a once-over was apparently too great a risk.

Then there was the time I took her on Splash Mountain, a plume ride so nefarious it's been described as "a plunge into hell" by no less an expert than the lady in line in front of us. I thought being tall enough to get on the attraction was the only safety consideration I needed to take into account, but I've since been informed height charts are for "morons who don't care if their kids die a Disney death."

I won't bore you with the details of the "Great Toaster Oven Debacle" of '06. Suffice it say I won't be letting little hands help me with the mini-pizzas any more.

I like to think I'm a fairly responsible parent who takes his job seriously and would never knowingly do anything to put his child in harm's way. Sometimes, however, you have to let kids take a few reasonable risks. The definition of "reasonable" will, of course, be the subject of endless debate, but as long as you strap pads on their elbows and knees, make them wear a helmet and cocoon them tightly in numerous layers of bubble wrap, you should feel confident you've done everything possible to assure their safety the next time they want to fire up the old tire swing.

We wouldn't want them bruising their little egos on the dismount. After all, anything less than a double somersault with a full twist into a half-pike would be a disgrace.

Keyword: Mother Load, to read our mommy (and daddy) blogs, join the discussion, upload your kids' photos and check out resources to make your life easier.

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