Let Nothing Happen

It's a fine line with children.  You have to protect them.  You must protect them.  You will never be able to live with yourself if something happens to them, "on your watch" as my mother called it not long ago.   But if you don't let them get out there, fall down, hurt themselves, experiment and explore, they won't have a chance to learn and grow from their experiences.
 
I find myself thinking of a quote from the movie Finding Nemo often.   The father, Marlin, has lost his son, Nemo.  Marline partners up with another fish, Dori, who has a knack of seeing right to the heart of things.  Marlin thinks he's talking to his son at one panicked point instead of Dori and says, "There, there, there. It's okay, Daddy's here, Daddy's got you. I promise I will never let anything happen to you... Nemo."  To which Dori thinks and replies, "That's a funny thing to promise. Well, you can't never let anything happen to him, then nothing would ever happen to him."

That's how I feel frequently.  I see people being over-protective.  Stopping their child from experiencing things.  Carrying the child from place to place, when the child can walk without assistance.  Saying no and stoping exploration and creative though.  It's the, "Let Nothing Happen" mentality that is intended to protect but may hinder instead.

I try to balance safety, reasonableness and flexibility all at the same time.  We each have a point in a situation where we step in to council or even discipline a child.  I find that my tolerances are sometimes shorter than others and sometimes much more broad.  I try not to say, "no" too much.  Anything chanted or repeated too regularly is drowned out. 

But any parent of a toddler knows that, "no" is an important word.  It's so important that it is invariably one of the first words a toddler learns in order to express his or her wants.  And it's most likely because they heard it from you on countless occastions. 

I try to pick what is, "no" and what is okay.  Do I really want him pulling all the spices off the spice rack he can reach on the low shelf in the pantry?  Not really.  But that spice rack is old news to me and to any other adult.  To a child, it's something interesting and something to discover.  So I try to turn that initial, "no" response into a more productive learning experience. 
For example, I'd try to say something like, "what are you doing with those?  Are you going to help me rearrange the spice rack?  You're done now?  Okay, then the spices need to be put back.  Can you show me how to put them back?"

I try to make sure that, "Let nothing happen" has the right emphasis in the lives of my children and, where possible, means, "Let as much as is reasonable and safe happen."

The Big Boy Update:  Into everything.  We're visiting my parents.  They have gone to a lot of trouble to remove delicate, breakable and dangerous things from areas my children can reach.  My son can still manage to find twenty eight things he shouldn't be into in less than an hour.  Earlier today he found a standing lamp in a closet he pulled out while we turned our back.  It was a fun toy, under supervision.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Black and Blue and Bump.  She crawls to the extent she needs to in order to get to the next thing to climb and pull up on.  She has two bruises on her head already and yesterday she got a big bump from another fall.  She's happy climbing and I don't think she minds the bumps because she's going places and those places are up.