We signed up for our library's summer reading program the other day and the boys are on a mission to out-read each other this year. Yes, that's a good thing. Reading is good. Unless you have an anxiety ridden child.
The boys were outside playing baseball and Older Boy wanted to try out his new bat. He coerced the Little Man to pitch to him so that he could try hitting. The Little Man was nervous about this because being older, Older Boy can hit. Hard. And the Little Man has been hit with the ball before.
As they are outside, I hear screaming. Blood curdling screaming. I go running out on to the deck and Older Boy is saying to me "I'm sorry, I'm sorry it was an accident" and the Little Man is just screaming. Then he screams "I'm going to die. I'm going to die". It seems that Older Boy ripped one of the Little Man's pitches and it hit him straight in the eye.
I got him in the house and he was just screaming. I got the ice pack and tried to assess if this warranted an ER visit. After about 45 minutes he calmed down. But still kept insisting that he needed to get checked because "some people die when they get hit with the baseball".
Now I've read sad and unfortunate stories of kids being killed when hit in the chest with a baseball but the Little Man wouldn't know about this because I don't watch the news around him. So where is this all coming from?
Right now the boys are obsessed with Dan Gutman books and have read almost all of them. Including Ray and Me.
Turns out Ray Chapman played for the Cleveland Indians in the 1920's and was hit in the head by a pitch from the Yankees and the injury was fatal. So THIS is where the fear of dying was coming from. And he was completely serious.
The Little Man was still saying he wanted to go the hospital even after he stopped crying, ate dinner and got ready to go to baseball practice (they are playing with water balloons tonight so we should not have any re-peat head injuries).
Who knew summer reading could be so traumatic? I monitor what they read but I would not have pulled this book from his reading list.
We've banned batting and baseball between the boys for the rest of the summer. Now I just need to find some happy, sunny books to add to their reading list.
2 comments:
Oh wow. I never would have thought that book would cause that anxiety, either. Does he have a black eye today? Good idea to ban their batting practices alone.
Magic Tree House for the Little Man? Ugh! Poor kid!
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