At the park, my daughter whines. Too hot, icky sunscreen, more juice. “Four-year-olds,” I say.

“Not mine,” another mom says, her face smug. “We parent like gravity.”

“Gravity?”

Her daughter screams, dangling by one foot off the monkey bars. “You’re fine!” the mom yells.

Never-whining girl faceplants into the woodchips.

Hadley Leggett is a writer and stay-at-home mom in Seattle, WA. When she’s not chasing after children, she’s working on the second draft of her first novel.