Ever had a ‘near miss’ with your kids?
By ‘near miss’, I mean that moment of panic you experience when you realize you almost made a mistake…like you turned your back and suddenly found your toddler standing in the center of your dining room table or your almost 2 year old wants to help empty the dishwasher and you turn around just in time to see him aiming a knife for an electical socket (that you CLEARLY missed when you were putting the safety plugs around the house) or maybe you set your car keys down in the cup holder of the back seat when you were buckling your toddler in the car and forgot about them until you closed the door and heard the ‘clicking’ that accompanies the lock and unlock buttons being pushed on the car remote. What if he had pushed ‘lock’ instead of ‘unlock’ and your baby was trapped inside the car? What about pushing the safety brake on the stroller while you are getting ready to load your kids into the car in a parking lot, turning your back to put your bag down and hearing your daughter yell, “MOMMY!!!” beacuse the break didn’t hold and your stoller is rolling away?
Does it sound like I’m experienced in the ‘near miss’ category? I suppose I am, even though the examples I just gave have happened over a period of 4 years. As I writing this, I feel terrible, but, I do think these little fits make me normal. I’ve been blessed to talk to enough mommys to know it happens to the best of us. I know moms who have almost ‘forgotten’ kids in the backseat, moms who have found kids on top of the fridge, dads who have heard a power tool start up, only to find a curious toddler who was just trying to do what he’d seen dad do (long before you would have imagined he could) and even moms who have come across a young one opening a ‘child proof’ lid or lock. Just another example of what puts us in that exclusive ‘mommy sorority’.
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