Before my daughter was born it was really easy to say that parent X was being too protective or that parent Y needed to relax a bit. I could sit back, watching in my hypothetical “when I’m a parent” world and make these judgments. Boy was I wrong.
Since my daughter started walking it has literally turned play time into pain time. As she walks across the room, trying her hardest to keep her balance, it’s taking every ounce of my strength not to grab and keep her safe. I know as a parent this kind of over protective love is a bad thing most of the time but I just don’t want to see her get hurt! Oh man, I can already feel the over protective father inside me rearing it’s ugly head.
“Daddy, can I go on a date with this boy?”
“Is he a good kid?”
“Yes daddy. He studies really hard and gets an A- on most of his tests. It’s very impressive.”
“A- you say? Well no dumb little boy is going to date my A+ daughter”
“But Dad, I got a B+ on my…”
“That’s enough. I’ve put my foot down.”
Yep, parent of the year award, here I come.
So what does all this have to do with me right now? Well I honestly don’t want to be that over protective father figure who holds the house under his iron thumb. While I want to be respected and admired (looked up to, held on a pedestal, all the usual fatherly stuff, can do no wrong kind of mentality), I don’t want to be in that position due to negative reasons.
For example, when my daughter is walking across the room I have this urge to grab her and keep her safe. I realize that this is a silly idea because when I grab her, she won’t see me keeping her safe, she’ll see me keeping her from fun. She’ll squirm and wiggle until I can’t take it anymore and put her down at which point in time she’ll just start to walk around again. Seeing the possible learning experience of balance, coordination and failure, I’d naturally try to minimize her dangers:
- Remove pointed edges. Check
- Place pillows on hard objects. Check
- Clear ground of tripping hazards. Check
- Get in location to catch baby in case of trouble. Check
Oh, but the protective father inside me says that this is not enough. He realizes that life is random, so even though I’d thought I’d covered up all the possible dangers, my daughter and her ability to find trouble would seek any problems like a cat chasing a laser pen. So while my inner over protective father is thinking about how to fix the area, my inner geek knows that to solve the problem, we’d need to go to the source. Momma.
While my next thought was to wrap Diane in a giant pillow to protect her, I realize that might be a bit of an overkill and not really help my daughter out much. If anything, she’ll see Mamma wrapped in a giant thing and try to go play with her. Upon my daughter tackling her, Diane would not be able to move her arms and thus my daughter would bounce off and hurt herself. My inner over protective father is not pleased. So while all the voices inside my heard are arguing, the only one who is actually paying attention to my daughter (this is the physical me, for those who are playing along at home) realizes that there is a simple and easy solution.
Ok, so maybe being the over protective father isn’t such a bad thing. I mean, I get to wrap small children in pillows and that sounds fun. If all else fails, I can always ask Ben to come help me and he’d get a kick out of the uncomfortable suffering that would come from it.
Do you have a story about trying to protect your child from danger? A funny photo of your child wrapped in protective gear. If so, please leave a comment below for everyone to enjoy!
nice post. thanks.
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