(WSVN) - A mother is warning other parents about the dangers of riding with your child down a playground slide, after a photo captured the moment her toddler’s leg broke.
Heather Clare from Long Island posted the photo to Facebook, showing her holding her then 1-year-old daughter Meadow on her lap as they went down a plastic slide.
Her husband snapped the picture right at the moment Meadow’s foot bent in the opposite direction, becoming wedged between her mom’s leg and the slide
“This picture is the moment her leg was breaking,” Clare posted on Sunday. “She’s still smiling… because it was happening at this exact moment. When we went to the ER, the super empathetic doctor lectured me on how common the injury is. I had no idea. I thought everyone took their kids down the slide.”
Meadow suffered a fractured tibia and fibula in her right leg, and spent a month in a cast. Clare told People Magazine the accident happened just days after the little girl had taken her first steps.
“It was terrible, especially feeling like I put her in that position,” Clare said. “It was completely avoidable.”
Clare told Newsweek the accident happened in 2015, but she shares the photo every year to bring awareness to other parents. This year is the first time she’s made the post public — and it went viral.
“I share this picture every year in hopes that the pain Meadow felt and the guilt that I still feel will save other babies and parents from the same,” she wrote in the caption. “Don’t ever go down a slide with a baby on your lap. There is no SAFE way to go down a slide with your little.”
The mom says she wants playgrounds to have warning signs telling parents not to go on the slide with their children.
In response to those criticizing how she held her daughter in the photo, Clare wrote, We didn’t start this way. She was centered on my lap. When I realized what was happening, I used my top hand to try to stop us and leaned to release her foot. I wasn’t riding down the slide with her on one side and leaning. That’s ‘common sense.'”
Clare’s photo and message has been shared nearly 100,000 times since Sunday.
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