Disagreeing with dh about safety

[oceanbaby]

My dh and I are constantly having disagreements about safety issues with ds, 2.5yo. I know I am on the paranoid side, but not to the point of absurdity, but I don't think dh is paranoid enough. He does the safety basics, he's not a total space out or anything, but he doesn't seem to really believe in the 1 in a million chance that something bad could happen.

Like just today, he was taking ds to his mom's house, and knew that ds would fall asleep on the way there. At our house, we often let ds sleep in the car in our enclosed, ventilated garage which is attached right to the house with a monitor on in the car (even though we can hear him without it, but again, I'm a little paranoid). So, he tells me he's going to take the monitor, so I asked, where will the car be? And he said "in the driveway?" WHAT?!?!?!?!? Okay, so his parents live in an upscale, wealthy suburb, very quiet street, culdesac/loop type thing, but still, I would never ever ever leave ds sleeping out there with only a monitor. There's no way to see the driveway from inside the house. I said absolutely not. So dh agreed to move one of the other cars and put him in the garage with the door open to the living room. Okay fine, that I can live with. But if we hadn't talked, he would have left ds sleeping in the driveway with no way to see him!

At the grocery store, dh will have ds in the cart, I will walk up from having gone and gotten something, and I will see dh with his back turned to the cart, no hand on it, sometimes a few feet away, ordering from the deli or the butcher or whatever. Anyone could grab ds or walk away with the cart (a mom here on MDC had this happen just last week). Ds could try to stand up and fall out (he knows how to work the safety belt).

My mom drove up to our house the other day, and saw dh walking AHEAD of ds, by a good 10 feet or so, on our busy city street. What if someone ran up and snatched ds? What if ds bolted into the street? What if a kid on a bike came bounding around the corner and ran into ds? I mean, come on, he's got to at least let ds walk in front of HIM, not the other way around.

Whenever I bring these things up, he just rolls his eyes like I'm being ridiculous. So how am I supposed to handle this? I can't just let it go - I don't care how unlikely it is that something bad may happen, I won't take the chance if I don't have to. And I think that dh is just way too relaxed about the chance that something awful could happen. It's like he has an "It can't happen to me" kind of attitude. And it's driving me crazy. I don't want to be on his case all the time nagging him about it, but it seems like something too important to just let go.

[famousmockngbrd]

I have an evil idea. The next time he takes him for a walk down the busy city street, follow them at a distance. (Or get a friend to do it.) When DH is walking 10 ft. in front of DS, sneak up and grab him. Duck into a store with him or something. Then let your DH freak out for a few minutes, wondering where he is. That should do it.

[Piglet68]

OMG.

Did you really write this post, oceanbaby or was it ME?

I'm dead serious. I had this almost exact conversation with someone not long ago. Okay, not the car thing but the shopping cart, definitely. And the walking 10 feet ahead of DD, yup.

Oh, and does your DH sit your DS up on the kitchen counter (in a kitchen with ceramic tile flooring) and then *walk away*? Can you just SEE your child falling off and splitting their skull?

I have honestly had to just come to accept that men just parent differently. And, as much as my DH *hates* it when I say this, he simply doesn't have the hormonal/instinctual/biological drive of the Mama Bear. He doesn't see accidents waiting to happen around every corner (it took me months to accept that this was normal, for me who has always been very laissez-faire about such things until I had a baby!).

I try to count my blessings that he is the most wonderful father a girl could ask for, and try to overlook the few things that make my hair stand on end. And, the annoying fact is, DD has had just as many bumps and bruises under my watchful eye as she has his.

[Clarity]

in our family it's the reverse...but I would ask him to do thing your way on a VERY SELCT FEW that are really important to you after explaining why it's so important to you and seeing if you can come to an agreement about it. Your perception about how much risk there is versus the actual risk is quite differnet (only about 100 kids are abducted by strangers each year, msot kids are molested by people they know, but serious injuries from shopping cart falls are apparantly more common.) So recognize that real vs perceived is different and may be different for each of you. And then bite your tongue on the rest of the issues...each parent parents differently and it does not mean people are neglectful if they make a different risk assesment from you. For example, I teach DD how to use the stairs safely. DH would rather have them permanently gated off. Is one of us wrong? I teach her about the hot stove, Dh would rather her not be in the kitchen when the stove is on.

Accidents and bad things happen even to the most cautious parent, so doing everything "right" is no guarantee. And won't make you feel better, you'd still go "if I'd only" in the event something happened.

[Dragonfly]

Oceanbaby - Ds' dad and I have these same issues. The worst was with the car. We live in a basement with our door around the back of the house. He would leave ds by himself in the van IN THE DRIVEWAY. Not only could he not see (or hear) him from in the house, but the path to our door is long enough that even if he *could* hear him, somebody could snatch him and be long gone before he could catch up. Or ds could knock the car into gear and be down the very steep hill behind our driveway before his dad even had a clue.

I agree with Piglet - there are some things that parents will just do differently and it's important to pick your battles. For me, issues of safety - where there is a very real risk of significant damage (or disappearance, no matter how unlikely it may be) are where I draw the line. What finally solved this particular problem was to just put my foot down and tell him flat out not to do it anymore. I said to him that thinking of the danger ds could be in from that sends me into an all-out rage. That I cannot even breathe or function if I let my mind go to the risk he is taking with our son. That seemed to make an impression.

It seems that men, in particular, tend to think that they can conquer any obstacle, outmaneuver any risk. Perhaps if you spelled it out for him - put into specifics what you are worried about. Ask him to entertain the idea for a second that he might not get there in time. Then ask him if it's worth the risk.

[eilonwy]

My husband is at least as paranoid as I am. Honestly, I think this is one of the few benefits of having had such a traumatic birth experience. I was in labor for so long and had so many problems that Mike was feeling like he'd lose both the baby and me, so he's always been very careful about paying attention to Eli.

Eli was only left in a car once, and that was by my best friend. I asked him to pump gas for me and watch Eli while I ran into the convienience store to get a drink... I turn around, and my friend is right behind me without Eli! I about had a heart attack and ran out the door. He told me "I could see him the whole time" but I was so terrified and upset. I think my reaction scared him enough that he'd never do that again. My husband just uses the pay-at-pump ones, and avoids the issue.

That said, I agree about choosing your battles but I think you need to make your point crystal clear to him. Show your husband what happens to small children when they fall a few feet from a shopping cart. Find statistics on child abduction or even from CPS about what constitutes neglect. If he thought that he could potentially lose the chance to be around his child for letting him walk behind him on a busy street, he'd probably be less likely to do it, kwim?

[Piglet68]

ITA about picking your battles.

My "win" was crossing the street with DD. My DH will often jaywalk with her, or when he is waiting for a light he will stand OFF the sidewalk on the actual street part. I can just see a car coming around the corner and plowing over them. Yes, there is only a couple of feet difference from where he stands and where *I'd* like him to stand (back from the road!) but it makes me so upset that he promised not to do that anymore, just because it so upsets me.

[oceanbaby]

Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one dealing with this. I talked to dh again about it yesterday, and I'm really hoping that I got my point across.

I know that the odds of something like I imagine happening are very very low, but it only takes the 1 time. I mean, someone wins the lottery every week, and those are pretty low odds too.

Piglet - about the standing on the street corner: My dad's best friend in college was standing on the street corner when a car came around the corner too fast, skipped up on the curb, and hit his friend, paralyzing him for life. So growing up not only were we never allowed to stand in the street, but my dad made us always stand a few feet back from the corner. I make my dh do the same when he is with ds.

About the evil idea - my mind thinks like that too, but I could never do that to dh. He's way too emotional for something like that. But, I remember when we used to walk with ds in a stroller when he was a baby, and drivers would just totally ignore us starting out on the crosswalk and come flying around, with us pulling the stroller out of the way. It used to piss dh off so bad, that he said one of these days he was going to walk around with an empty stroller, and let the next a**hole driver who did that go ahead and hit it, just to give him the scare of his life.

[grumo]

Hmmm.... I'd never really thought about my self as particularly lax on safety but I do most of these things.

- I would not leave dd in the car in my driveway with the monitor, but mostly because I think she'd be freaked out or that I'd forget the parking brake.

- in the grocery store dd asks every once in a while to wear the safety belt. I never bother with the thing. And I let her ride standing up in the basket. I do not let the cart go much beyond my reach and I am always talking to dd so I am not worried about someone walking away with her. I also know what she is like and she is not the type to stand in the seat or try to climb out. If the idea occured to her, she'd ask me. "Is this safe?" She asks me this about 100 times a day!!!

- if I didn't walk 5 feet ahead of her, we'd NEVER get anywhere at all. Again, we are talking all the while and I frequently walk backwards. I tend to think I pretty aware of our surroundings, though I hadn't really considered the bicycle barreling around the corner type of thing.

- It was my idea to have her sit on the counter, and I also walk away. I feel I know my child, and I watch her. She knows where the edge is, she doesn't turn her back to the edge, she doesn't try to jump off, she is confident yet cautious about it.


I am not saying you are over protective or that your DH is not being flaky about safety. I am comfortable with the way that I do things because of the way I am and the way my dd is. I would would never do all the same things with someone elses kid because I don't know them. In fact, once while we were babysitting, the other kid wanted to sit on the counter with dd, and I realized I couldn't trust what he'd be like, so she came down off the counter, and I explained why to both of them.

[eilonwy]

That's all good for you, grumo, but your daughter is more than a year older than my son and probably a lot more trustworthy . Still, I think I'm a bit more paranoid than you are; I would *never* walk ahead of my son anywhere outside of the house. You couldn't pay me enough, and we don't even live in a huge city.

[pip]

My husband is more nutty than me. We were walking to the shops with Luka in his pram when he was really little, and it was dusk, so dh starts formulating a plan to put HEADLIGHTS ON THE PRAM!!!!!! I'm not kidding.

I laughed at him, but he insisted that Luka is our most precious possession, and we have them on the car right, so why wouldn't it be safer if the pram had them......


: boys!

[eilonwy]

Totally T When my older niece was very small (maybe 20 months old) my brother's girlfriend at the time, who was an only child and had never really seen a kid or their paraphanalia up close, came to the mall with us. I strapped my niece into her stroller and she said "Those saftey belts don't look very safe. They don't look like they'd hold her in at all!" I said that the idea was to keep her seated, not to protect her in a high speed collision. How fast can a stroller go, right? Not very, especially if I'm the one pushing. :LOL

[village idiot]

That's a funny story Elionwy.

Oceanbaby, ITA with you. I would be upset about those things too.

[Sofiamomma]

I have a friend who used to leave her children in her locked vehicle while going inside the store (this was several years ago, they are now teens), but her husband felt it was very unsafe. So, one day he followed her and while she was inside the store he moved the car. It freaked her out so badly that she never did that again. Pretty cruel trick, but then again. . .

I live in the city where that little boy was drug to death a few years ago. His mother had left him in the car with the keys in the ignition, the car was stolen, and he tried to push the boy out, but he got tangled in the seat belts. Very, very horrible story. When that happened my sister was watching dd1 for me and had been leaving her in the car while running into the store for five minutes. She, of course, had the keys and the car was locked, but she stopped doing it altogether after that.

I sometimes turn my back on my babe or my purse and suddenly get that panicky feeling. "Oh my gosh, someone could easily have swiped her and I would not have been able to stop it even though I was right there!"

It's tricky, because we live in a time when parents are held completely responsible for their children, and we know about every accident and kidnapping that occurs, so it seems more common to us. We very anxious and often overparent. I, for one, am concerned about the detrimental effects of that. My daughter wrote a composition for Thanksgiving that said something to the effect of "I am thankful for my mom. She keeps me safe by not ever letting me out of her sight." Egads! This is what I have done to my child!! She thinks she is not safe, or least that I don't, if she cannot be seen. That can't be good for her psyche. I was walking to school by myself at her age. I was even a latch key kid sometimes. I know the times are different and that we have different personalities, but I see the signs that she is chomping at the bit (Why can't I wait here for you? Why can't I go by myself?) and I don't know what to do about it. I try to explain that it is not her or her capabilities that I don't trust, but I don't know what all the answers are. To what end do I try to protect her from that one in a million chance? And how will ever live with myself if something does happen and I did not do all I could to prevent it?

Hope I didn't hijack your thread too much, Oceanbaby, but what you are going thru now is just the beginning.