“Don’t worry. It’s not going to hurt you.
Well … if it does, it won’t hurt badly.
And if it does hurt badly, it won’t hurt forever.”

In discussing the possibility that a rolling baseball might pop up and hit my son, I found myself incrementally adjusting how I communicated what to expect. Many worthwhile pursuits in life — sports included — involve a nonzero chance of getting hurt.

All this in the spirit of teaching: “No matter what happens, you’re going to be OK.”