About 2 months ago, my family experienced a situation that made me reconsider home safety and childproofing, and made me question whether my oldest son is some kind of genius.
My oldest son just turned 5, and his younger brother is 3. It must have been around 3 a.m. when I heard a door open and shut. I, of course, got up to check it out. What I found was my two oldest opening and closing the interior garage door after they had unlocked it. I figured that was all, but I opened the door and the outer garage door was up. I was shocked to my core. I explained the danger they could have been in, pushed the garage button to close it, and shut the interior door thinking nothing more of it as I sent them back up to bed.
Fast forward to around 7 a.m. when we were all up and getting ready. I opened the garage door to throw something in the recycling bin when I realized the garage door was still up. (Though I’d sworn I’d closed it). I looked closer and realized with a quick inhale of astonishment: the car had been backed out about 5 feet. I was at a complete loss for words, reactions, parenting responses; you name it. All I could think about was, firstly, how on Earth did this happen? Second, it is a miracle that my children are safe, and no one was hurt.
My husband and I gathered what composure we could and tried to talk to our two oldest. They said they wanted to go to the blue house across the street, so they grabbed the key fob, got into the car and pushed the start button (thank goodness the ignition wasn’t started). Then they pushed the “handle” down until the camera came on and slowly moved backward but couldn’t get far. After sitting there for a while in the cold car, they decided to come back in. (This must have been when I heard the door).
My husband and I did our best to explain how lucky they were to have not been hurt and how absolutely dangerous this was! And we went into a lot of detail because during this whole excursion they broke probably about five big house rules.
I spent the next few days buying a home security system and some pretty intense locks for all of our exterior doors. Our house is now a fortress. No one may enter or exit without us knowing.
I had honestly thought our babyproofing for our 18 month old was up to code, and we didn’t really need to worry about extra safeguarding for our 3 and 5 year old. I also thought we were at least 9 or 10 years away from the sneaking out at night conversation.
I guess I was wrong on all fronts.
Call it a mom fail, call it naivety, call it whatever you want… I just wasn’t prepared.
This is a friendly reminder to never underestimate all the things your children know how to do. They are information sponges, soaking up every bit of knowledge their little brains can contain, which is a lot. And often they’re things we would never think of being aware of, like how to drive a darn car!
As I was telling one of my close friends about this traumatic experience, I remember her saying, “You’re so lucky because it could have been a different situation. You could’ve had no idea your kids knew how to get into something dangerous, they do it for the first time and it ends in disaster”. Yes, I knew that we got lucky, but her response was a good reminder that due diligence is such an important and overlooked part of parenting. I know that sounds like legal speech. I’m no lawyer. But I am a mom who wants to keep her kids safe. Part of that is planning ahead against things that seem extremely unlikely for your kid to do.
So, buy all the locks for the cabinets, especially ones that contain dangerous chemicals and batteries. Buy locks for your exterior doors so that only adults can open them. Buy a home security system. The market for them has expanded, so they can actually be reasonable. Those of us who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s probably remember thinking that only our rich friends had security systems. Not anymore… actually, I don’t know if that was true even then.
If you’re called a helicopter parent, so be it. While our kids’ brains are developing it’s your job to be their safety net, both emotionally and physically.
Let them be wild and crazy and have fun. That’s what childhood is for!
Let’s just keep those precious little souls safe while they’re fulfilling that essence of youth.
