Every time I walk up the stairs to my bedroom, I try to avoid looking at the man-sized dent in the wall. One day I'll get around to spackling over it. One day after my daughter's finally old enough for us to remove the "safety" gate at the top of the stairs.
How safe it really is is still in contention. If you look closely, the dent bears a striking resemblance to my husband's side. It's exactly where side met wall to keep him from tumbling head over heels down our stairs in the middle of the night. The culprit? The safety gate, which closes with a click that could wake the dead. Headed to the bathroom at 2 a.m. that's the kind of click that could mean a toddler who suddenly wants to join you for four hours of "up" time when all you want to do is go back to bed.
Stepping over it seems the only way to make it to the bathroom and back to bed without waking the kid. But, in this case, stepping over the gate that blocks at three-year-old from falling down the stairs meant, well, falling down the stairs.
Which leads me to my latest conclusion: child safety measures are bad for the rest of us. We've never gone crazy with child safety measures, preferring to move things to unreachable places if they're really dangerous (think magnetized bar on the wall for our knives instead of the standard block on the countertop). The few we have gone for, however, have been virtual nightmares for Mom and Dad.
I can't tell you how many times I've pinched my fingers in the lock on the cabinet beneath our sink. When the babysitter broke it, she apologized tearfully. I almost kissed her. Then there's the time I yanked and yanked on the stupid doorknob cover, which managed to keep not only our miniature Houdini, but everyone else, inside. I pulled hard, the door came loose, and I landed on my butt. Yeah, the cover was gone by nightfall.
So are we just the klutziest parents on the planet? Or is making the house child safe on par with making the house adult-dangerous?
Image: SafeBeginnings
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