Childproof caps and baby gates too "permissive"

Who would have guessed that childproofing was controversial?

As it turns out, some people don't believe in engineering the environment for the safety of children, the sanity of their parents, and the integrity of the china.

A columnist at the Washington Post came under fire for suggesting that parents keep dangerous stuff out of reach of toddlers, instead of leaving it all in harm's way to teach the little buggers a lesson:

In a recent column, I suggested that childproofing a house made more sense than trying to say no to a toddler each and every time s/he reaches for a glass or lamp cord or a jug of Drano. Some readers thought I got it right, but a number felt that childproofing was a cheap substitute for the kind of parental discipline that children need. Should parents just say no--over and over and over again? Does a lock on the china cabinet keep children from developing self-discipline? [WaPo]

Here are some selected reader reactions to the column:

"I think your advice is totally disturbing and in error. ... You want to have the child 'learn by touching and doing.' I was raised by parents who taught me that certain items were not for me to touch. Oh yes, it took some constant attention from my parents for a little while, and if I did not obey, a little slap on the wrist or my bottom helped my memory quite a bit. No cabinet doors were ever locked--I was taught not to go in there. ...

[and]

"I am proud that I raised my children with the same values. I was never concerned in our home or in the home of others that they would touch or do anything that they were told to leave alone. ... In my opinion the permissive upbringing of children is why we have problems with so many young people today." [WaPo]

Caps on electrical outlets sap the self-discipline of the nation's youth. Locks are instruments of permissive parenting!

It makes sense. Rugrats with baby gates might grow up and demand consumer product safety, or industrial hygiene. You can't nip that sense of entitlement in the bud too early.

Comments

[Windypundit]

I'm thinking you don't have kids, right? Me neither. Trust me on this: You don't want to get involved. People who have kids will rip each other to shreds over small differences in child-rearing methods. Just back away slowly, don't make any sudden moves...

[togolosh]

The problem with childproofing as an approach to safety is that the world isn't childproof. Learning how to be safe requires exposure to things that are not safe, and teaching by the parents how to deal with those things. It's analogous to the overuse of anti microbial agents leading to a weak immune system.

The problem stems (IMO) from the fact that consumer culture by it's very nature sees the solutions to problems in terms of things which can be purchased. You can't purchase good sense, or safety consciousness any more than you can purchase a good immune system. We are focused on things as solutions (rather than behaviors, habits of mind, or training) because consumer culture bombards us with the message that things are the archetype of solutions.

Consumer culture also steers us away from habits of mind as solutions because they are the enemy of commerce - nobody makes a buck when a kid learns to stop and look both ways before crossing the street. The social and political implications are unpleasant - I see this dynamic at work in all sorts of nanny state interventions ("think of the children" is practically a mantra for the nannyists), from the war on drugs to the TSA.

[ChrisR]

I keep caustic cleaners, sharp knives, loaded firearms, and machinery with rotating parts within easy reach so that my daughters aren't subjected to a permissive upbringing.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

"Childproofing" isn't necessarily about consumerism. The example that set off the WaPo commenters was keeping a cabinet locked.

The columnist wasn't talking about engineering the entire house, let alone society at large. She was just recommending that parents take a look at the places where they want their little kids to spend a lot of time.

[TomK]

That is hilarious. I can't stop laughing.

You hit the nail on the head. I really do like your writing. You are going to have lots of prestigious prizes for your great writing someday.

[Jack]

I read Lindsay's last line and spit coffee out my nose. Oh my goodness that's funny.

[Jack]

And Windy, you are SO right. Parenting is the sneakiest form of societal one-upmanship. Again with the coffee up the nose........

[mudkitty]

Sighs and eyerolls.

[Cass]

"Rugrats with baby gates might grow up and demand consumer product safety, or industrial hygiene. You can't nip that sense of entitlement in the bud too early."

Or, disobedient children grow into disobedient citizens.

[Count Zero]

Good for those people that they raise their kids so wonderfully. It's why I love Darwinnian ethics! If they feel it's the proper way, then let them raise their child that way, so when their child dies for being too stupid to exist in the current genepool, I don't feel guitly in any way. By God, let them leave the Drano out and learn the hard way! Kudos to them!

[janet]

When people think of their own childhoods, they think back to the part they remember -- which is after they were cognitively developed enough to understand the kind of instructions the letter-writer is describing.

Most child-proofing is aimed at very small children, the crawlers and toddlers who are not verbally adept enough to understand even many simple instructions. They're not good at generalizing, especially given the seeming arbitrariness of many rules -- like why it's okay to climb on the play structure, or up onto the couch to sit with Mommy, but not onto the dining room table or the lid of the piano. They don't understand cause and effect well, if at all. The difference between what is allowed and what isn't are also very mystifying at this age, because they don't have the context -- that's what they're busy learning every day. I'm all for discipline and rules, but but they have to be appropriate for the child's age.

[Mary]

But in the end, LB, isn't it better to teach the child, rather than expect the whole world to be child proofed? I think that may be what the columnist intened to convey.

And if "children" whose ages are becoming farther and farther out, learn of the dangers inherent in the world and learn early on to respect them, wouldn't the child indeed have a better chance of surviving? I have lived in rural areas, where it seems they grow up faster, and suburban, where those in their 20s pull stupid moves that lead to deaths. I prefer the former. If you teach a child responsibility early, it seems they are less likely to take dangerous risks because they think they are invincible. I understand your point about some of these interventions helping overall, but I think in your mockingness, you miss the point.

For example, my sister has a second floor with window screens. Her neighbor had bars installed lest the toddlers "fall out". Mine took the time to insure theirs know enough not to push on the screens and risk falling to injury, possible death. Which children do you think will be better off in the long run? Raising children takes time, sure, and constant vigilance. The world will never correct all the hazards, in time, they will encounter. It seems to me adopting that approach has led to needless deaths of suburban kids --maybe later, in their 20s, because eventually all will be without a parent/nanny state in close reach.

Perhaps a little more balanced look at these things, and maybe a little life experience when you and Mr. Darcy become parents, will change your outlook. The world is not a safe place, and neglecting to teach your children this ultimately will be to their own peril.

[Mary]

Janet:
Do you have children? I think you are giving the learning powers of toddlers short shrift... They really are like sponges at that age, VERY capable of learning.... a variety of things. For the record, I don't disagree with the common sense safety teachings, but I do think there is no time to begin teaching about dangers like the present. Otherwise it seems, once they're off at college, it's too damn late to teach them common sense on action/consequences. Maybe it's the whole "insurance" world we live in that's to blame... (ie/ok to screw up and make mistakes -- "it's covered".)

[Dan]

But in the end, LB, isn't it better to teach the child, rather than expect the whole world to be child proofed? I think that may be what the columnist intened to convey.

Uh, I don't know about the world, but the part of it containing the bottle of Draino that I don't want my toddler drinking hell yes. Is that seriously a lesson you want to fuck around with letting your kid learn the hard way?

[janet]

Janet:
Do you have children? I think you are giving the learning powers of toddlers short shrift... They really are like sponges at that age, VERY capable of learning.... a variety of things.

Yes, I have a daughter who is now 2 1/2. She's very bright, and of course she's capable of learning -- that's her full-time occupation. But "capable of learning" is a relative term. I'm not planning on teaching her differential equations for quite a few years, for example.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

It's not an either/or proposition. Supervise, instruct, and discipline but also reduce the risk of harm where you can. Willful disobedience is just part of the equation. A lot of safety hazards result from kids behaving perfectly well in an environment that's designed for people who are bigger, stronger, and more coordinated than they are. Little kids are going to trip, fall and fumble more than grownups. Knowing that, it's just rational to minimize the number of sharp edges, tippy lamps, and precariously balanced vases in their vicinity.

Adults take these measures for themselves without even thinking about it. We put stuff where we can reach it. We buy tools that are the right size for us to use comfortably. We avoid products that seem excessively fragile or hazardous relative to our adult powers of coordination and attention. When adults anticipate threats to themselves and take action to correct the problem, we call it foresight and common sense. When we do the same thing for preventable child-specific threats, it's still foresight and common sense. That's a good example to set for kids.

[Pennant]

A friend recently told me a story whereby his wife had bought "toddler-proof" locks for kitchen cabinets. When the husband came home she exclaimed to him how the infant had been so well-behaved sitting quietly in the middle of the kitchen and not going into cabinets while she went about dealing with stuff in the kitchen and house that day. At that point apparently, the toddler proceeded to go and undo all the baby-proof locks that he had observed her open over the course of the day. So if you're going to keep stuff away from infants, you'd better use height and a proper lock/key.

It seems to me, the people who complain about "nanny states" and interference in child raising are often the same ones who want to enforce their own (usually religious) rules and will insist on no sexual education in school or abstinence-only sexual education that avoids discussing contraception on the grounds that teaching about sex "promotes it". In those cases, they prefer to use lies and misinformation.

Ironically, they generally have it backwards. A toddler has a natural inquisitiveness that you don't want to suppress (unless you want unimaginative factory labour) but lacks a complex world-view and critical analysis and judgement skills to identify dangers. A teenager on the other hand is at an age where they can understand consequences for their actions if they have sufficient information.

Now, I think that encouraging discipline to set behavioural boundaries, even with toddlers, is a good and achievable idea (within limits). Otherwise you get parents who take their kids to restaurants, whereupon the kids proceed to scream their heads off for the duration of the meal.

The problem appears to be just really bad understanding of risk management in the general populace. Kids who break rules about behaviours in restaurants (and their parents) go home with their meal unfinished. A kid who eats Drano or household cleanser while the parents are busy elsewhere is much worse off. The first case is a risk with manageable consequences, but the second has a dire outcome. Sound risk-management indicates that different strategies are appropriate to deal with the differences in risk.

By the time you have an adolescent, they will be more capable of assessing risk if you provide them with appropriate information. That's when you want to give them some leeway so that they can learn to recognize and control the risks they will be subject to in the real world. As they grow increasingly sophisticated, you transfer more decision-making responsibility by providing them with more information and more input in the decision-making process.

Telling a toddler "no" every time they reach for something that's dangerous to them doesn't help them figure out what's dangerous (because they're incapable of it except by experience, such as getting a shock from sticking their finger in the light socket or getting sick from playing with the toys at the doctor's office). Doing the same thing when they are adolescents and naturally curious about sex also doesn't teach them how to evaluate risk for themselves when they encounter new situations. So when they encounter dangerous situations that aren't covered in what they've been taught (like sub-prime mortgages maybe), they're ripe for the slaughter.

People like Togolosh and Mary are right that encouraging good habits like looking both ways before crossing the street and signalling before changing lanes is important. But without a recognition of what situations require protective habits, the habits are just seen as useless rules to be ignored as soon as the child escapes parental authority. A toddler doesn't have the cerebral development to understand that. A tween/adolescent can start to develop those skills if it's encouraged instead of sabotaged.

[Bruce the Yank]

In my fairly small apartment in DC, I have two autistic children visiting every other weekend. Thus not only are my lower-level cabinets locked but household cleaners are placed high, not low; zero tolerance. The communication issues that may come into play for other parents just don't work; the children are effectively not English speakers, so merely teaching that Drano, etc., are "Mr. Yuk" would not be effective and therefore would be foolish as a strategy.

How this would play out for parents of non-autistic children, I could not guess. But the commenters who noted the viciousness of parents going at each other - absolutely true.

[elspi]

"For example, my sister has a second floor with window screens. Her neighbor had bars installed lest the toddlers "fall out". Mine took the time to insure theirs know enough not to push on the screens and risk falling to injury, possible death. Which children do you think will be better off in the long run?"

The one's that don't fall out of the second story window.

Children run and play and push. Not having bars on a second story window is a prelude to a funeral.

[Mary]

Elspi,
Some children maybe are smarter than to go off running and pushing into everything around them?

Or maybe the parents are just smart enough to plan their run-and-push moments in better suited environments.

(Then again, I'm starting to understand why so many kids act inappropriately in inside public places -- no planned better outlets for their natural impulses. They are smarter creatures than you might give them credit for, them kids. Sounds like the grown ups are just convinced they'll be lazy in their role perhaps.)

[Andrew J. Lazarus]

I'm a parent.

Kids routinely sabotage "child-proofing". You have to trust to some of their own physical skills, and you have to teach them, and for truly dangerous objects (e.g., a swimming pool), you have to childproof them the best you can.

I do think that there are people who over-childproof their home, but not because the kids need to learn what 120V feels like, but because of a false sense of security.

[pecunium]

toglosh: No, the world isn't safe (and I have yet to be in a childproofed house which was childproof; right now I am the part-time nanny for the fourth newborn I've been involved in caring for. One of which was as an au pair) but there is a lot to be said for reducing the risks.

The problem with childproofing isn't that it leads to permissive parenting, but that a less than complete job can lead to complacent parents.

Mary: Which 18 month old toddler understands what's out the window? Eric Clapton's kid fell out; while he was in the room. Perhaps you might want to take a little more balanced look at these things and ponder other's life experience before issuing pusilanimous, and pompous, pontifications as if the people to whom you are being patronising haven't actually thought about the issue.

Just saying.

[janet]

I agree that childproofing is no substitute for supervision (or discipline). It's part of a set of tools we use to protect and guide our children as they grow up.

But I don't think (pace Mary) that it's feasible simply to command children to obey you and expect perfect understanding and perfect compliance, no matter what the instruction or how old the child.

[dbqp]

It's a culture of parents who want to explain rules to children. "Because I said so..." is the best lesson that a child can learn from an active, involved and watchful parent. Some things don't need explanations; that is why "don't" and "no" need to be used in distinctly different situations. "Don't" should be reserved for those things which present no real physical danger. "No" should be used in close connection to "stop."

Wouldn't you rather teach your child from an early age that when you say "no" it is an absolute...I know I don't want my toddler thinking that running into the street is debatable or a game.

Children are social sponges, they can understand hundreds of words and contexts at a time they can only use "ma, da, ga." Ask an eleven month old if he/she wants a bottle for proof of that.

Certainly baby-proofing the house should be done in the most dangerous areas of a home - there's just no excuse for leaving access to Draino and Clorox - because even the most vigilant parents lack eyes in the backs of their heads.

However, those who would turn their homes into foam padded playgrounds are missing an important facet of being a parent. It is difficult to watch your child fall while learning to crawl, stand or walk. However, I know a lot of high school teachers (and I really do) most would argue (given a forum where their honesty isn't viewed as a lack of dedication) that an ever increasing number of teenagers rely too heavily upon their parent's continued "child-proofing" right into adulthood.

There is a very important societal aspect to the great extent that some will go to in baby-proofing their homes. Children get some knocks and dings, and there is no warranty on them, and it's hard to watch, and our society would lead us to believe that we're not good parents if we're not making the world as safe as possible (the consumerism argument above is as good as any).

However, character education is perhaps one of the most important jobs of a parent. It begins with setting boundaries - no means no. It continues life long with allowing our children to take some falls - as controlled and safely as possible, not free falls.

Yes, I played with matches as a kid. I would hope my child would obey the rules or to never even find a similar opportunity. However, when I burned my grandmother's rug on accident, I learned a valuable lesson both physically and emotionally - a small burn, a good spanking, and the worst of all: making the apology.

No, there is no lesson in drinking Draino or spilling steaming spaghetti - don't be daft. But yes there are all kinds of lessons to be learned from getting caught playing in the pots and pans, bumping heads on tables, or drawing on walls, or pinching fingers. Don't be misled - the overwhelming majority of us make it through childhood, and indeed life pretty safely despite some bumps (who hasn't slammed their own hand in a car door?).

Remove the worst of the dangers, make your child safe, but you don't need to bubble wrap your house - eventually that might be a disservice to your child too.

Although there are a lot of folks who would clamor at the idea that there can be too much baby-proofing, they don't have an exclusive claim to making choices in their child's best interest.

[Payday Loan Advocate]

Windypundit, you are absolutely correct! Parents will kill just to make their point in parenting. So if you are an unexperienced child-handler, leave this issue alone. Hahaha!
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