*Warning* Your child is probably in danger (but it’s okay)

If we could be magically transported back to our own youths we would all have simultaneous heart attacks just watching all the unsafe behaviors we routinely engaged in. Kids wandering the neighborhood unsupervised, riding bikes without helmets, riding in cars without five-point harnesses, eating without hand sanitizing. Let’s not even talk about a more rural upbringing where kids were driving farm machinery and doing chores involving large animals. While I am fully supportive of the improvements we’ve made in understanding child safety and being more proactive in protecting our kids, I do think it has made a bigger dent in mommy confidence than we want to admit.

We are now pretty sure that any object in our house could kill our kids if used improperly. The truth is, we’re probably right. We now feel guilty for going to the bathroom alone because we just know that our miniblind cords are going to reach out and grab our kids before we get back. Or they’ll find that one outlet we haven’t put a cover on because it’s out of their reach. We have become hover parents not because we want to, but because we have been told that EVERYTHING is dangerous and if something should happen to our kids it’s because we weren’t properly supervising or protecting them.

I really think it starts in the hospital. Before we were permitted to leave with our newborn we were asked to watch a video entitled, “Never Never Shake a Baby.” Seriously. The video was very explicit about how there may come a time when you want to shake your baby, but you shouldn’t. They did reenactments of how to put a baby in the crib and walk away when you feel the urge to shake it. So not only can any household object kill my kid, but at some point I may feel compelled to shake this tiny precious thing so hard that I cause brain damage? That absolutely does happen and I think it’s good to prepare parents for the emotions they’re going to feel that could cause them to do something they’d regret, but I think it is one more factor that contributes to us feeling like absolutely everything is a danger.

Here are just a few of the things that are apparently trying to kill your child:

-hot dogs (choking hazard, nitrates)

-teeter totters

-trees (climbing dangers)

-plastic bags, plastic sippy cups, plastic dishes

-baby shampoo

-open windows

-front loading washers and driers

-balloons

We are now even afraid of decisions that should be easy. Giving my child an apple should be a good thing, but now I need to know if it was locally grown, was it exposed to pesticides, or if it was genetically modified. Am I going to ruin my kids by vaccinating them and giving them toxic terribles or risk deadly historical diseases by not vaccinating them? Should I be hiding all winter to avoid the worst germs or telling my kids to lick shopping cart handles so they build up immunities?

Obviously there will be kids who are injured by seemingly harmless things. There are accidents that are preventable and those we never could have anticipated. I am not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about safety, but at some point we also have to let go. We get a very false sense of control when we think we’re accounting for all possible ways things could go wrong. I think we can also have a spirit of  judgment towards moms when terrible things happen because we assume we’re protecting our kids more fully than they were. We see every random accident as a cautionary tale and obsess even more about keeping our kids in a safe bubble. I’m afraid this contributes to a mother who is already experiencing hardship feeling additional shame. If only I’d been watching more closely, or eaten better during my pregnancy, or not trusted that person. As though any of us can fully control the things that happen to our children.

I found it fascinating recently to read that kids are having more playground accidents the more we try to create safe playgrounds. We have removed the element of risk from kids, so they are growing up unaware of their limitations. This is actually causing more injuries. There’s also an interesting development in the medical world of the “hygiene hypothesis”— the idea that maybe our digestive systems were made to have an exposure to gross bad stuff in order to develop proper immune responses. We may actually be hurting our kids by trying to protect them through overly sanitizing them and their environment. I wonder how much we can use this information to help us think through other aspects of our parenting.

While carseats are obviously helping our kids be more safe, are there areas where our attempts at childproofing their world is actually causing them harm? Are there ways in which I am turning off my parenting instincts because I’m afraid? I intuitively feel it’s important for my kids to spend time digging in the dirt, but do I allow my fear of germs and bugs (or snakes and bears where we used to live in Tennessee) to keep me from encouraging it? Do I become immobilized because my intuition says my baby is okay crying in his crib for a minute, but I’m terrified an article said I’m causing attachment issues? I think it’s important for my kids to learn to cook or do the laundry, but do I worry about safety issues so much that I keep them from learning appropriate self-care skills?

It is really hard to let go and allow our kids to experience the world. We’d love to keep them from ever making mistakes or from being careless, but we just can’t. At some point we have to trust that God is their protector even when we can’t be (or we shouldn’t be). We have all suffered hardships and have seen how God has met us even in our hard times, but do we trust him to have that same loving care for our children? Should God ordain a tragedy in the lives of our kids, do we have faith enough to make it through? Do our children? Are we raising kids who think they are invincible because we’ve created a world we think can’t hurt them? At some point we have to allow our kids to make choices, even choices that could have difficult consequences. And then we have to trust that we’ve trained them well and they are watched over by a God who truly cares.  It isn’t easy, but I think it’s a mother’s job.