Bad Parent: To Hell with Babyproofing
I'm not securing any cabinets.
by Erin Blakeley
March 6, 2008
Instead, we have discovered a real joy in watching our son interact with our things. His fascination with our stuff is far more rewarding than his passing interest in the plastic crap we've bought for him. Each morning he shimmies over to our Creature stereo subwoofer, which resides under my desk. He stares at it, palms it, occasionally tries to eat it. Then he turns the tiny silver knobs all the way up. Apparently, he thinks NPR could use a little more base.
And I love that he prefers playing with our bookshelf to his own board book library. Sandra Boynton is perfectly entertaining, but my heart pitter-pats when I see him get up on his tip-toes, haul the Chicago Manual of Style off the shelf and sit quietly on the floor, flipping through its feather-thin pages.
Of course, we don't really think he is expressing a preference for high culture. He's exploring our things because they are colorful, or shaped to his liking; slap a pair of retractable googly eyes on it and the Creature is a dead ringer for Boobah. Mostly, he gravitates to our stuff because it is ours, and in a way, by extension — his.
Nonetheless, we are perfectly aware that there are real dangers in our home, and we've addressed the ones that are genuinely threatening.
Despite our best efforts, no level of babyproofing will ever guarantee a child's safety.
We vacuum the floors every few days to collect the accumulation of detritus that he might otherwise ingest. We've learned to open our windows from the top, rather than the bottom. We would totally move the bleach to the back of the cabinet — if we actually owned bleach.
But despite our best efforts, no level of babyproofing will ever guarantee a child's safety. Sure enough, our son had his first choking scare just a few weeks ago, when he tried to swallow a part of one of his toys. And not just any toy: his hand-crafted, age-appropriate, lead-paint-free, made-in-Vermont wooden bunny rabbit. He managed to chew off its pink little ear, and was rolling it around in his mouth when my husband fished it out.
Both inside the walls of our apartment, and beyond it, there is a world that isn't always safe or healthy or perfect. And that's the world we are teaching our son to live in. So there will be no composite foam flooring in our future. No spring-loaded outlet covers. No hours spent cursing each other as we try to affix all that plastic hardware. Our family is living life on the coffee table edge, so to speak. And we couldn't be happier about it.
©2008 Erin Blakeley and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Erin Blakeley is a freelance writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Star Ledger, NYC24, and Tiempo, among other publications. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.
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