Mom Holds Toddler On Slide; Girl's Foot Bends Backward (Photo)

KINGS POINT, NY — At first, it might seem to be a curious crusade, warning parents not to go down slides with children on their laps. Slides are in virtually every playground in America. They're a staple of youth and a favorite for parents who just want to play with their kids.

But every year, Heather Clare, a 35-year-old mother of three from Kings Point, takes it upon herself to issue her own public service announcement on Facebook: "Don’t ever go down a slide with a baby on your lap."

In September 2015, Clare took her 1-year-old twins Matthew and Meadow to Heckscher Park in Huntington. She took Matthew down a slide at the playground first, then slid down with Meadow. She decided to go with them because the park signage indicated the park was recommended for kids 5 and older.

"As a mom, when I saw that, my thought was well maybe going down the slide with them would be safer," Clare told Patch.

She was wrong.

As Clare was holding her daughter in her lap, she felt her foot catch.

Clare's husband, Brian, was snapping photos at the bottom of the slide. His photo, intended to capture the cute, seemingly innocuous moment, instead captured a horrifying scene. Meadow's foot was caught between the green slide and her mother's leg. It bent completely backward — and broke.

"This picture is the moment her leg was breaking," Clare wrote Sunday in her annual Facebook post. "She’s still smiling... because it was happening at this exact moment."

At that moment Meadow, didn't make a noise, Clare told Patch. She didn't start crying until they got to the bottom of the slide.

"When we looked at the picture, we knew right away that her leg was probably broken," said Clare.

They rushed Meadow to a hospital. She suffered a broken tibia and fibula and had to wear a cast for four weeks. When the cast came off, the girl had to go to physical therapy.

"She had just taken her first steps three days before that," said Clare.

The grotesque injury might seem to be more associated with the NBA and NFL. But it's actually quite common for kids who go down slides with their parents.

"I had no idea," Clare wrote in the post. "I thought everyone took their kids down the slide."

She told US Weekly that a doctor said a person's weight — even a sibling — behind the child prevents them from stopping "if a limb gets caught.”

A big part of why she's sharing her story is what she calls, "mom guilt."

"I took her down that slide," Clare said. "I put her in that position."

She cried for a couple weeks. That kind of break could've left Clare's daughter with serious long term problems, such as her legs growing at different rates.

Clare, a school psychologist, said she used to be a paramedic and still didn't know about the dangers of taking kids down slides. She feels all playgrounds should put up warning signs. She never sees them though, so she shares the photo in hopes that her daughter's pain — and her own guilt — will prevent others from suffering the same fate.

"There is no SAFE way to go down a slide with your little," wrote Clare.

A study published last year found that an estimated 352,698 children under 6 years old were hurt on slides in America from 2002 through 2015 — many of those injuries were broken legs and toddlers between 12 and 23 months had the highest percentage of injuries.

Overall, the most common injury was a fracture at 36 percent, usually involving the lower leg, a release on the study said. In most cases, this type of break happens when the child's foot "catches the edge or bottom of the slide, then twists and bends backward while sitting on a parent's lap."

"Many parents and caregivers go down a slide with a young child on their lap without giving it a second thought," said lead researcher Dr. Charles Jennissen, clinical professor and pediatric emergency medicine staff physician at the University of Iowa's Carver College of Medicine. "And in most cases I have seen, the parents had no idea that doing so could possibly give their child such a significant injury. They often say they would never have done it had they known."

Clare's post, embedded below, has been shared more than 57,000 times.

Warning: Graphic image

Photo credit: Shutterstock