Are you childproofing your home or making it so your child feels like they are on house arrest?

We can tend to go overboard with wanting to protect our children.  This is a natural response, however, it is one you have to really keep in check.
Allow your children to be human, and as humans, we get hurt, both emotionally and physically.  What makes us stronger is how we learn to be better, strong because of those ‘things’ we have had to endure.

Your child gets sick and their immune system gets better unless you pump them so full of medicines that their body isn’t working to fight it off.  There are times medicines are needed, but more often than not the doctor will give you something that if you just allowed the body to fight, it would get stronger. With our busy lives and tight schedules, we try to hurry the process up, therefore not allowing nature to takes its course.

The same is true about protecting your child in your home. Medicines and toxic things should be up out of a child’s reach, but other than that your child needs to learn what not to do to get hurt. If they fall out of bed, pick them up, hug them, tuck them back into bed but don’t buy a bed rail. Our children will learn, with our guidance or from the ‘school of hard knocks’ what is safe and what is not.

Confessions of a P̶e̶r̶f̶e̶c̶t̶ mom:

My son had an obsession with the hot element on the stove.  I couldn’t figure out a way to stop him from trying to touch it. I panic every time I had to leave the kitchen in fear that he would sneak in to touch the stove. I had to learn to turn the stove off no matter when or for how long I left the kitchen.  Finally one day my husband came along and said ‘this is enough, he wants to touch him, let’s show him’. He turned the burner up high so it was bright red. He grabbed my son’s hand and held it close enough so he could feel the heat, the whole time chatting, ‘this is hot, this will hurt you, this is hot, it will hurt you’.  He held it there until my son was uncomfortable with the heat and tried to move it away.

From that day on, he never even went close to the stove and even as an adult he now has respect for heat.  He loves to cook and campfires, so we didn’t damage his psyche towards being afraid of heat, we just taught him respect for something that could cause him harm. 

To find out what kind of Parent you check out our Parenting Quiz 

Feeling stressed. Thinking your house is nothing but Chaos?.
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