House-proof your kids

When you have kids, your world changes forever. You are now responsible for more than just yourself. You have to provide for a new life; feed, clothe and protect this child in many ways more than you do for yourself. You could once be reckless with your own life, skip a meal or two because you had something better to do. Try having an 18 month-old to miss a meal. Good luck with that. So along with all the new responsibilities you have been given, you also have to keep them safe.

As funny as it sounds, this may be the hardest task you will have as a father. I mean, if you go to work and ‘bring home the bacon’, you’ve got feeding and clothing covered. Protecting them from others - well, I can’t speak for others, but I’m pretty sure I can take care of mine there too. So that brings us to keeping them safe or protecting them from themselves. Parents tend to lean more to the ‘dog on a leash’ method today, meaning that if they don’t want the little ones to get something, they put it out of reach. And if you want them to stay somewhere, you lock them behind gates.

I’m gonna come at this from a different angle. Stop child-proofing your house and start house-proofing your children.

A child’s life is about constant learning, They learn how to crawl, walk, talk, read and write. Now they also learn what is right, what is wrong, what is accessible and what is off-limits. When a child is 2 years old and she likes to play with your cell phone, the most sensible thing to do is put it up high, right? That works only until she learns how to climb. How about electrical outlets? Gotta have a bunch of outlet covers to protect her, right? That works only until she learns that a (metal) butter knife can pry them off. Or how about my in my case. I have lots of guns so shouldn’t I have one of those stupid trigger locks for each one of them? Only until they find the key...and that’s not a chance I’m willing to take.

So we’ve thrown the whole child-proofing thing down the drain and I’ll use my guns as an example. To keep my family safe and to insure that my kids don’t try to play with them, every once in a while I’ll put one of my guns (unloaded) on the coffee table or on the floor in the living room. Then I’ll show it to the kids and tell them not to touch it. The first time one of the kids sees it, they go right for it (of course) and me or mama are there to train them. With a switch, wooden spoon or just a flick on the hand waiting for their little fingers to make contact, they usually don’t go for it more than twice (the second time was to see if I’m for real). Then after I see that they understand, I’ll ask them if they want to touch it. Nine times out of ten, I’m answered with a shake of the head and a “see ya later”. Then we leave it out for a few days to be sure (we don’t leave them alone with the gun) and training is successful. This same method works with cell phones, outlets, knick-knacks or anything else you want far from little hands.

Another thing we have to train for is our woodstove. It’s our only heat so it’s on 24/7 through the winter. We have it in the middle of our kitchen and there’s no room for one of those barrier walls around it. So we train. Now with this you must use caution. What we do (and this has a 100% success rate) is get a fire going and when it starts to get hot, but not hot enough to burn, we tell the kids to touch it. They do, and as soon as heir hand touches the stove, we yell “HOT”! I’m not sure if it’s the temperature that tells them to stay away from the stove or the near heart attack from us yelling, but none of them have been burned on it yet.

We do these things for our kids safety, not to scare them or be mean to them. But I would rather my little ones have a little momentary discomfort on their hand than fall into the stove or get a hold on one of my guns. The consequences there are too much. So if you just want to teach them that things are not allowed if you have gone to lengths to blockade them, then child-proofing is the way. But if you don’t want to live in a padded house with padlocks on the refrigerator and finger-pinching cabinet locks on all the cupboards, then house-proof your children. It works every time.