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19/07/2012

Obstacle Course

There are many reasons why I do not, and never will have offspring.

Apart from the fact that they are loud, sticky, smelly and cost more than your average house pet, I also don't believe in baby proofing.

In my humble (and admittedly unpopular) opinion, baby proofing is a waste of time and money. Anyone, when encountering an environment built for beings more than three times their size, will want to get as high as possible! If only to get a lay of the land!

Anything hidden in hard to reach places is obviously of great importance and must be investigated at all costs (for example; super glue, tucked away at the back of the top shelf in the pantry) and children investigate by putting things in their mouths.

There are no amount of plastic locks that can keep a determined toddler out of your wine cabinet/record collection/gun case.

There is no such thing as a child proof cap that will keep a curious five year old from opening it to get at the 'candy' inside, all they do is frustrate grown ups who haven't mastered the push and twist action.

Children are built to learn (and bounce) and they do so at an alarming rate. They can watch their parents struggle for hours to program the TV remote and then pick it up the next day and execute, flawlessly, what took their parents forever to do, in seconds. Either that or hurl the remote into the TV, the fish tank or out a window.

They explore, they open things, they take things apart to see how they work, they insert appropriate shaped objects into appropriate shaped holes (you even buy them toys that teach them how to do that, so how can you blame them for inserting jam sandwiches into VCR players).

Prospective parents just need to come to terms with the fact. Once you start breeding, you'd better be prepared to put all your nice things into storage for at least 20 years.

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