Dear strangers, please stop telling me my active daughter might get hurt

“Mothers from miles around worried about Zuckerman’s swing. They feared some child would fall off. But no child ever did. Children almost always hold onto things tighter than their parents think they will.”

— E.B. White, “Charlotte’s Web”

At school pickup, I stand outside the chain-link fence that separates the kindergarten playground from the parents. Our 5-year-olds walk in orderly lines from the building to the yard. They blink in the afternoon sun, disoriented after many hours indoors.