My toddler has discovered how child proofing works. I have no idea when exactly this happened but it did and now there is no childproofing my child.
I think this discovery on the inner workings of childproofing came about when my husband bought my son his first board game. He finally had something that was locked away behind childproofed doors that he really wanted to get to.
My husband thought that although our son is not quite three-years-old {the recommended age for almost all of the board games} he should be introduced to board games. Well… board games were a big hit. My son loves them! He loves playing with the games so much so that we had to make a rule about when we are allowed to take out and play with the board games {When the baby is sleeping}. This way we do not lose pieces and the baby doesn’t try to eat the game.
When we are not playing with the board games they are put away. We have a game cabinet where all of our family game night games are stored. Like most things in our home, these cabinets are childproofed. This “childproofing” was not a big enough deterrent for my toddler. He figured out how to unlock the childproof and get to those board games within a day.
Now my son is having a fabulous time opening all sorts of things that were previously off limits! Nothing is safe anymore. My mother never really childproofed. She taught all of her children what was off limits and what was acceptable to play with; and there were five of us! I guess I am going to have to start buckling down on childproofing without the child proof paraphernalia. Aaak!
Needless to say, my sneaky son will wait until I walk upstairs with the baby to put him down for nap to get into trouble. He will take out a couple games, bring them down to the basement, and then have a free for all with the game boards and pieces. I come back downstairs to utter chaos! I think I am underestimating the power of his sneakiness.
How do you make the switch from childproofing everything to not childproofing at all?
