How confident are you in your parenting?

Maybe you have seen the video making its rounds online, where twin boys attempt to scale a dresser and as a result, it topples on one of them. The other twin manages to move the dresser off of his brother. Unfortunately, there is not always a happy ending to these stories. A woman in my town lost her 18 month old daughter to a fallen television and has since used this tragedy as a platform to talk to parents about anchoring their furniture.

As I perused the comments on one of the videos of these boys, I saw a lot of accusations similar to that which inspired my gorilla parenting post. “Where were the parents?” was one of those frequently said. Is it possible that you are absolutely never in a different room than your child? Maybe that’s the case, maybe you bring your little guy with you when you take a shower, maybe you sit in a chair in the corner when she takes a nap, I have no idea (and I don’t care because I really don’t feel like it’s any of my business, but that’s another story!).

If the parents were anything like many of us, where were they? They were mid-poo when they heard a thud and cry. I’m not trying to be crass but this is real life and we’re adults. Or maybe, they put the little misters down for a nap and then they went to the kitchen to try and sneak a bite of warm, untouched food for the first time that day. They ran out to collect all of those Amazon packages that were sitting on the step. If the boys were playing quietly with Legos, they may have mistakenly thought they had a window to do something they felt was necessary. They were likely just doing normal parent things, human things.

A comment that had even more of an impact on me was, “They should have taught their children not to climb.” I was immediately reminded of a gun debate where a friend of mine said that because his future children will be taught about gun safety, he would be keeping the gun on the coffee table. My children are pretty obedient, they follow rules the majority of the time and I’m often complimented on their behavior. The question now is how willing am I to stake their lives on it? If they disobey me and eat a cookie after I told them not to, they’ll be fine. If they cross a road when a car is coming, they might die. They know better than to cross the street without looking and yet, I still hold their hands when we walk. Why not?

Since none of us are the perfect parent, what say you anchor your big furniture, just in case? You think you’re a good driver but you still put them in a car seat, right? It’s like that. Mount your televisions or hook up the anchors, you can even hire someone else to do it. It’s not something you’ll ever regret.

What are your thoughts?