Safe Delusion

Lesson 2 in Parenting 101 (see also Lesson 1) is that you must spend thousands of dollars on equipment to keep your child safe. If you don't people will glare at you and seriously consider calling Child Protective Services because your children are obviously "at risk". So get out your credit cards or take out a hefty loan because keeping your little one safe will require at the minimum:

a carseat (actually a couple of carseats, one to face backward under 20 lbs, one to face backward over 20 lbs, one to face forward up to 60 lbs, and a booster seat for up to either age 8, 80 lbs, or 4 foot 8 in. Got that?), a gate for the stairs, locks for the cabinets and drawers, helmets in several styles and sizes, plugs for all the outlets, a life vest or better yet a swim suit with floatation devices built in, a temperature regulator for the bath and a soft faucet guard, a net to go around the trampoline and a fence to go around the pool, a lock for the fridge, a rail for the bed, and well, you may as well bubble wrap the whole house because there's bound to be something potentially pokey, aka dangerous, in there.

Safety is great, right? Think safety first. Nothing more important than safety. The problem? Children aren't learning how to be safe because they are prevented from encountering anything remotely dangerous.

No, I'm not saying chuck all the stuff on the "neurotic saftey parent" list. Carseats are required by law, but the age and size of child that needs one keeps going up. As the laws are right now, my husband would have been driving himself to school in a booster seat. Gone are the days of my mother who used to drive and nurse a baby at the same time.

But a lot of the equipment actually hinders a child's ability to detect, gauge, and avoid danger. Like my sister who very responsibly kept gates at the top and bottom of her stairs whose children could not navigate them until almost age 2. I've never used stair gates and my babies learn to descend feet first on their tummies before they can walk.

I thought we were being so safety conscious by choosing a house on a traffic free cul-de-sac, until my son bolted down my friend's driveway on his bike into a street full of cars without looking. We also have a net around our trampoline and our children safely bounce into it with nary a broken bone or spinal cord injury - until they happen upon a trampoline without a net and they have no concept of staying on the darn thing.

Even less humorous is the mom who always put a life vest on her 3-year-old when she was in the pool. I mean always. The child hardly touched the water without it on and most doctors and childcare experts would applaud her devotion to safety. But her daughter had to go to the bathroom mid-swim and forgot to put the vest back on and the result was tragic. Because of the life vest, she had no fear or sense of caution around the water. The life vest also gave the mom a false sense of security making her attentiveness lax. So in the end, did it really keep her safe?