From: abd0@gte.com (Alvah Davis)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: keeping kids alive, twins perspective
Date: 14 Oct 92 21:19:40 GMT

Vicki Newton (newton@convex.com) wrote:

>i was saddened to read about the little 20 month old friend of a
>misc.kidder who recently choked on a peanut.  my little alex is
>9 months old, the standard grab-anything-i-can-and-stuff-it-in-
>my-mouth stage.  i read these sad stories about these tragic
>accidents, and can only imagine the grief that the parents feel.
>i am not sure how people survive something like that.

>i'd be interested in hearing from you experienced parents about any
>tips on how the heck you are supposed to balance your fear/concern/
>cautiousness with raising a healthy and not paranoid wimpy kid.  it
>seems to be such a fine line between letting them explore and develop
>and leaving them vulnerable to dangers.  some things, i know, are
>obvious.  i just can't help having this feeling sometimes, that alex's
>whole purpose in life right now is to try and kill herself and my job
>is to stop her.  i say that mostly humorously but can any of you relate?

>veek

My wife and I have four-year-old twin daughters, and we've had a great
relationship with our pediatrician.  As you might imagine with twins, our
worries were all the greater since it's hard enough to keep a constant eye
on two toddlers (whom I sometimes thought of at the nine-month stage when
I was in a worrying mood as a single thirty-pound menace to it/themselves).
We always kept a long list of worries and questions for our next visit to
the pediatrician, and she always complimented us at the end of each visit
for doing a great job.  So I took it really seriously when she cconcluded
our one-year checkup with the words:  the next year is a very dangerous one
for children.  Your primary job is going to be keeping them alive.  

After that year was up, I had decided she was right.  And after that year,
things started getting a lot easier, too, and I didn't feel like I had to
constantly terrorize my children about not doing stuff that could kill them. 
That's how I answered the question about how to raise children who are
excited to explore the world around them and yet who aren't constantly in 
danger:  We're able to inspire that sense of controlled exploration now
because they're cognitively able to manage the tension between exploration
and safety.  (Not always, however.  A year ago, as my wife and I paused at
the door of their preschool, they ran ahead of us.  A moment later we
followed and couldn't find them.  They had crossed a busy street to reach
our car, and were standing holding onto the door handles waiting for us to
come with the key, and they were beaming about what big girls they were for
having done so.  They were devastated when they saw the terror in our faces,
and though we neither yelled nor punished them--they instantly saw they had
done something that frightened us more than ever before--we talked all the
way home about how, no matter what, they must always obey our rule about
not crossing the street without a grownup.)

Our pediatrician also advised, rather than forbidding certain activities that
are safe in the presence of an adult, to allow them under those circumstances.
She said she allowed her daughter to climb the built-in bookshelves as long as
she was there to catch her.  This seems to avoid the danger of children trying
things only when parents aren't around.  We've got an agreement with our
kids that when they want to try some new physical feat, they'll come get one
of us and ask us to spot them.  (We get to overrule if even that is unsafe.)

I've taken one other piece of advice from a colleague very much to heart.  He
says the thing to realize is that almost all of kids' behavior is to do with 
learning about the world--and that, viewed in that context, it not only needs
a kind of control that is easier to provide, but makes the spilling of the
entire jug of milk on the kitchen floor easier to take, because it provides
many opportunities for learning and teaching and eases the requirement for
saying, "Don't do that, that's against the rules."  We certainly have rules
in our household, but with the above view in mind, we now have very active,
exploratory children who have a sense of safety and whose explorations, while
still sometimes concluding in the occasional big mess, are very rarely
dangerous to themselves or others.  I don't think I'll ever give up vigilance,
especially because of the times we live in with threats to children everywhere,
but I do think it's not that hard, after age two or so, to teach children
how to explore the world safely.

--Alvah Davis, GTE Laboratories

(To misc.twins hopefuls:  I still intend to get a mailing list together for
twins and parents of twins.  Finding the time to do it has been impossible--
if anyone else out there can lend a hand, it might happen sooner.  I have
a lot of information available on how to do it.  Thanks!)
>i was saddened to read about the little 20 month old friend of a
>misc.kidder who recently choked on a peanut.  my little alex is
>9 months old, the standard grab-anything-i-can-and-stuff-it-in-
>my-mouth stage.  i read these sad stories about these tragic
>accidents, and can only imagine the grief that the parents feel.
>i am not sure how people survive something like that.

>i'd be interested in hearing from you experienced parents about any
>tips on how the heck you are supposed to balance your fear/concern/
>cautiousness with raising a healthy and not paranoid wimpy kid.  it
>seems to be such a fine line between letting them explore and develop
>and leaving them vulnerable to dangers.  some things, i know, are
>obvious.  i just can't help having this feeling sometimes, that alex's
>whole purpose in life right now is to try and kill herself and my job
>is to stop her.  i say that mostly humorously but can any of you relate?

>veek

My wife and I have four-year-old twin daughters, and we've had a great
relationship with our pediatrician.  As you might imagine with twins, our
worries were all the greater since it's hard enough to keep a constant eye
on two toddlers (whom I sometimes thought of at the nine-month stage when
I was in a worrying mood as a single thirty-pound menace to it/themselves).
We always kept a long list of worries and questions for our next visit to
the pediatrician, and she always complimented us at the end of each visit
for doing a great job.  So I took it really seriously when she cconcluded
our one-year checkup with the words:  the next year is a very dangerous one
for children.  Your primary job is going to be keeping them alive.  

After that year was up, I had decided she was right.  And after that year,
things started getting a lot easier, too, and I didn't feel like I had to
constantly terrorize my children about not doing stuff that could kill them. 
That's how I answered the question about how to raise children who are
excited to explore the world around them and yet who aren't constantly in 
danger:  We're able to inspire that sense of controlled exploration now
because they're cognitively able to manage the tension between exploration
and safety.  (Not always, however.  A year ago, as my wife and I paused at
the door of their preschool, they ran ahead of us.  A moment later we
followed and couldn't find them.  They had crossed a busy street to reach
our car, and were standing holding onto the door handles waiting for us to
come with the key, and they were beaming about what big girls they were for
having done so.  They were devastated when they saw the terror in our faces,
and though we neither yelled nor punished them--they instantly saw they had
done something that frightened us more than ever before--we talked all the
way home about how, no matter what, they must always obey our rule about
not crossing the street without a grownup.)

Our pediatrician also advised, rather than forbidding certain activities that
are safe in the presence of an adult, to allow them under those circumstances.
She said she allowed her daughter to climb the built-in bookshelves as long as
she was there to catch her.  This seems to avoid the danger of children trying
things only when parents aren't around.  We've got an agreement with our
kids that when they want to try some new physical feat, they'll come get one
of us and ask us to spot them.  (We get to overrule if even that is unsafe.)

I've taken one other piece of advice from a colleague very much to heart.  He
says the thing to realize is that almost all of kids' behavior is to do with 
learning about the world--and that, viewed in that context, it not only needs
a kind of control that is easier to provide, but makes the spilling of the
entire jug of milk on the kitchen floor easier to take, because it provides
many opportunities for learning and teaching and eases the requirement for
saying, "Don't do that, that's against the rules."  We certainly have rules
in our household, but with the above view in mind, we now have very active,
exploratory children who have a sense of safety and whose explorations, while
still sometimes concluding in the occasional big mess, are very rarely
dangerous to themselves or others.  I don't think I'll ever give up vigilance,
especially because of the times we live in with threats to children everywhere,
but I do think it's not that hard, after age two or so, to teach children
how to explore the world safely.

--Alvah Davis, GTE Laboratories