Woken up this morning by a cardboard robot named “Ow” dancing on my head — a hand-crafted gift from Miles (with help, but it was his idea, executed under his direction) to celebrate my 41st. Nothing like a birthday that starts with dancing robots. Later in the day, learned that he had decided to make his own snack. Got bread out of the refrigerator, applied butter with one of his play-dough knives, then put it in the toaster. The rules of the game change daily.
Music: Ozric Tentacles :: xingu
Many happy returns of the day, my friend.
And I like Ow Mk1. Now all we need to add is the bong and death ray ….
*pinkie to corner of mouth*
As one who is in ‘practice’ sessions to create my first child I’m curious.
The logical part of my mind would want to say, “No, the butter will melt, drip into the bottom of the toaster and possibly start a fire.”
The ‘break the boundries’ (and in my case a smaller portion of the mind) would want to do what you do. Where do you draw the line on his experiments?
It seems so crazy thinking about it, the story you posted last year about the ladder climbing comes to mind. You would never allow him to climb it given the choice yet the lack of fear allowed to him to think it was something easily overcome. Scary stuff.
Les — First, to clarify: When this happened, Amy was outside for a minute (I was at work). She came back in to find him making his own toast. He’d never before pulled a chair up to the kitchen counter to reach things up there, let alone tried to make his own toast, so she/we were totally unprepared for this. It was a lesson both in how quickly kids evolve and in what our new rules of monitoring him have to be. So it’s not like we stood by and watched as he played with the toaster. Although, truth be know, there’s probably not a lot of danger inherent in a toaster (I don’t believe it’s still possible to get electrocuted by sticking a fork into a modern-day toaster, correct me if I’m wrong). Much more danger in him finding the knives, etc. up there.
Anyway, we try hard not to let safety consciousness become over-consciousness — a pattern I think is rampant in contemporary parenting. I believe strongly that lots of mistakes and even lots of injuries are critical to solid physical learning, physical/mental coordination, etc. I don’t think children benefit from having parents drag them away from everything that could hurt them. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything goes, and every parent has to weigh those decisions against what they know to be the child’s capabilities, their current stage of development, etc.
It’s critical that children know they can’t play in the street (at least not in most places these days). But I definitely believe in body learning through experience, even when that includes letting them get hurt from time to time. Kids are a hell of a lot tougher than most parents give them credit for.