Those moments that make you go white-faced when you remember them.

[FrancesJ]

I wondered if anyone else has these. Meaning, vaguely, those times when you find your little darling poised on the verge of doing something completely, totally dangerous. My worst one is when, on returning from the loo (I don't leave my 2.5 year old unsupervised on a regular basis, honest, but needs must, and she was sat, happily, in front of the tot drug commonly known as 'teletubbies' I found her about to chomp down heavily on a particularly noxious alkaline battery she'd somehow extracted from the remote control (having first moved her scooter to the sideboard to reach said remote). Gazing at it lovingly, as if it was a sweetie......

The 'when do you leave your children unattended in the bath' thread made me think about this one, and I wondered what other people's hair-raising moments were (if you have any, of course

Incidentally, my Mum found me poised about to swallow a drawing pin at one point (I was three). Bless her, she's remembered it to this day.

[Ghosty]

I've got one - when ds was just two he woke up crying one night. I ignored him for a bit as I usually do in the hope that he will 'drop off' again. Anyway, he went on and on so after about 10 minutes I went into his room and to his cot. It was dark in there so I couldn't see him but I could hear him. My heart stopped when I couldn't find him in the cot but found him sitting on top of his changing table!
The next night we put him in a bed!

[LiamsMum]

Mine happened yesterday, I was in the laundry doing the washing and assumed that ds was still sitting in front of the tv or playing. I happened to walk past the door which leads out to the road, and noticed that it was wide open. I'd forgotten to bolt the damn thing and ds had opened the door and walked out. He was heading up the driveway towards the road, when my dh arrived home in his car and found ds before he went too far. I nearly died - will be bolting the door ALL the time from now on.

[robinw]

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[Lucy123]

Oh my god, I have all this to look forward to!

I suppose I knew really as my mum has plenty of hair-raising tales. One day she found me (aged 1) in the sink in the bathroom, having blocked the plug with my nappy and turned the cold tap on - probably wouldn't be here if it had been the hot tap!

She also remembers my brother (aged about 18 months) standing upright on top of one of those 10ft high dome shaped climbing frames - the only thing she could do was to ask him to come down very quietly and without letting him know she was panicked - quite a feat! (yes, when he was 11 I also found him attempting to bungee-jump from an upstairs window using a bicycle inner tube. Bless.)

[Hilary]

I found my son aged 18m standing in front of a WIDE open window upstairs in our house. He'd climbed onto my husband's office desk and, fortunately, was so caught up in listening to himself yelling out the window that he hadn't stepped out. Funnily enough, my mums heart stopping moment was looking up from the front garden to see me aged about 3 doing exactly the same thing. Both windows were bolted immediately, needless to say.

[XAusted]

I was at the park with dd (6) and ds (3) and a football. Was busy with dd when noticed ds had disappeared from view. Sat dd on bench with strict instructions not to move (rural area, not likely that dd would be in danger) and sprinted in direction of ds (could hear him crying by now). Football had rolled on to school drive adjacent to park which is on a steep slope then rolled on to busy road at the bottom. Ds had just picked up ball from road and car had just swerved to avoid him. My heart stopped and we've never taken a ball to the park since.

[mckenzie]

our 15 month old son, although not yet walking much, is a fantastic climber. The other day I popped into the kitchen for 2 secs to put the kettle on and came back into the lounge to find him hanging out of the window having climbed up onto his play table, from there onto the telephone table and from there onto the window sill and out of the window. We only moved here a few weeks ago and so we're still discovering areas that aren't child proof but this is one that I wished we'd discovered before our son did.

It was one of those awful moments that I'm sure happen fairly regularly when you really want to rush to your little darling and grab him quick but know that you mustn't incase you startle him and he falls. He seemed quite nonchalant about the whole thing of course and couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Bless him!

[Bozza]

You're all scaring me! My DS (aged 19 months) is only just discovering the joys of climbing. I did discover him this morning playing with th etoilet cleaner (he had managed to remove the safety top). Then he managed to pull a double ladder down on top of himself which I felt a bit quilty about. Sunday mornings seem to be the time when he gets into trouble. The other week he had a fairly major paddy when I stopped him playing with a pot of drawing pins.

[Hilary]

Our horrors usually happen when we have just moved house too, mckenzie.

I caught our fist son, aged 7 months, climbing up the stairs. He was nearly at the top. Since he'd only been crawling for two weeks, we didn't have stairgates in place!

[Tinker]

Aaargh! Just remembered. When I was about 12, my brother shouted 'Stop' just as I was about to look at the sun through binoculars! D*head or what? Me, that is.

[SueDonim]

When my DS was about 3 I went with my friend and her 3 yr old DD to the beach. We'd just got back to the car, laden with all the beach paraphenalia, when I heard a screech of tyres. I looked up to see my DS in the middle of the road, a hair's-breadth away from a car. With all the clutter I was carrying I hadn't noticed or felt that I'd dropped his reins and he'd just gone. The driver really shouted at me, which didn't help matters but when I thought about it, I realised they must have had a terrible fright, as well.

Definitely a cold-sweat moment.

[SimonHoward]

Only moment that nowadays makes me shudder and go a bit white was the time I ended up jumping throught what had been an open patios door at a friends house when I was about 7 to find that it had been closed.

I hit a massive plate glass sheet head first and luckily for me I stopped and the glass carried on.

Turned out that the previous owner of the house had installed the wrong sort of glass and instead of turning into little bits like a car window it shattered into massive sharp daggers of glass.

All I got was a 5mm cut on my forehead.

My mother and the owners of the house were horrified. Even worse the guy who's house it was owned a glazing company. From that day on there was a bit of blue tape in the middle of the door and the glass was the right type.

[AnnieMo]

Bozza - I too had a close call with toilet cleaner! I was cleaning the downstairs toilet and had left the cleaner on the stairs ready to take upstairs to do the bathroom. I must have been distracted and the next thing I knew my 2 year old son came to show me the pretty green 'drink' he had poured into his teaset for his teddy!

Someone at work was telling me the other day that their neighbour came rushing to the door to tell them that he had just seen their 7 year old daughter on the roof. Apparently a younger sister had thrown a teddy out of the window and the older sister volunteered to fetch it!

[XAusted]

Just remembered this. Dd was somewhere between 12 and 18 months old and I hadn't realised that she could reach the place where Big Sharp Knives were kept in the kitchen. We had had a friend staying overnight and there was a mattress on the floor in the living room. Before I knew what she was doing, dd grabbed a two very Big Sharp Knives and, clutching them, ran into the living room and dived on the mattress. All she got was a graze on one finger. I have still not recovered from the fright 5 years on ... Our knives are now kept on a magnetic rack, high up on the wall!

[Enid]

The moment I realised dd had eaten a fistful of poisonous alum berries in the garden. The drive to casualty was the most terrifying 15 minutes of my life, especially as dd kept falling asleep and I was sure she was dying.

She was fine by the way, just had a very irritated mouth.

[IDismyname]

I came out of the shower one morning to find that ds (then about 2) had somehow managed to come across small padlock key, and was merrily trying to stick it into the power socket. We had covers for all of them, but had just unplugged battery recharger for my electric toothbrush as I went into bathroom, and had forgotten to replace it.
Makes my blood run cold, just thinking about it...

[Harrysmum]

Being very keen on cooking, I thought that it would be good to get ds started asap and let him stand on a kitchen chair to help stir cake mix. Didn't register that he had switched on the kettle or that it had boiled until he picked it up and poured freshly boiling water all over the work surface. I screamed, grabbed him, ran to the shower and held him under freezing cold water in a complete panic, he became equally hysterical and we (dh had come running when he heard the commotion) then realised that he hadn't been touched, not even a splash and was upset as to why he was being showered with his clothes on. I still feel sick at the thought of how bad it could have been esp when there had been a scalding incident in dh's family with his younger sister being quite badly hurt. I think that it was in The Best Friend's Guide to the First Year that said you get one chance at each potential danger and escape - the key is to learn and never let it happen again. He certainly hasn't been stirring any mix in the vicinity of the kettle since!

[Clarinet60]

This last one struck a chord, as ds loves to stand up there and make cakes. Scary stuff. The key in the socket is just the sort of thing ds would do. makes you paranoid, doesn't it?

[emsiewill]

We've been quite lucky, and had only one visit to casualty - when dd2 swallowed a penny. Really enjoyed searching through the sick, to check whether she really had swallowed it. Positively relished searching through the poo to check it had come out the other end. And it didn't appear at the first opportunity. IYKWIM.
Not so much a white faced moment, as a green faced moment.

[Ailsa]

I had a white faced moment today. I had a phone call at work today from dd's school to say that ds had been found wandering on his own in the car park. Luckily the girls from his after school club saw him and took him to dd's school, they didn't want to just take him as he wasn't on their list for today. I confirmed to the secretary that he shouldn't go with them, and that he should be going home with Nan. Anyway, secretary took him to find Nan and dd, which they did.

I dread to think what might have happened had the after school club girls not seen him. What with everything that has happened recently, Jessica, Holly and Milly! My stomach's churning now just thinking about it.

[susanmt]

Today my dd ran a bath for herself. Luckily I found her as she was stripping off as she had run the hot tank dry and put no cold in.
shudder - MUST get a latch for the bathroom door!

[Lizzer]

Ok, I've just put my story about my car crash on the missing persons thread. Perhaps this would've been better.

Basically me and dd were fine but after losing control of the car on the motorway I realised there was no point in steering as we started spinning round and round and the window smashed on my side as we hit the crash barrier. I looked at dd asleep in her car seat and honestly thought 'oh my God, this is the last time I'm ever going to see her.' I was amazed, when we stopped spinning and I ended up facing the oncoming traffic and no-one else hit us, that it was over and she was completely untouched. In fact she only woke up when I started screaming for help and, as the adrenaline rushed through me, the next few hours in casualty and getting picked up by my parents seemed, and still seems, to be a dream.

Absolutely horrid - but it does make you re-evaluate your priorities and never - ever take anything for granted. But of course you can't dwell on it. I was driving again in a week because I knew it wasn't my fault (apart from buying the damn tyre that blew out.)

I have chosen to think of it positively, it could have been soooo unthinkably worse. That we both got out of the wreck with nothing wrong (dd was fine, I had whiplash and a bruise on knee) is a minor miracle. I like to think someone is watching over us...

[Quimble]

Oh Lizzer, your story made me scared just reading it. I'm so glad you were Ok. I too crashed the car with my son in it - looked up, realised I was going to hit car in front however hard I braked, looked round to see little Tom's head going forward and slamming back into the car seat. He was upset but fine, but it didn't stop me leaping out of the car screaming "get an ambulance, there's a baby in here". Made no odds, everyone just stared at me as if I was mad. But my scary story was not this. I was walking along a path by the river where we live, Tom (21 months) was out of the buggy, strolling around/behind me. I gazed out at the river thinking how beautiful it was and turned absently to see Tom sticking his fingers into the open fuse box/wire connecting bit of a streetlamp (the cover was hanging off), happily going "buzz..beep" etc. I really felt like he might have died that day and I can't imaging a more appalling thing than to have him taken from me in an accident that was my fault! I haven't told my husband because I felt so ashamed.

[SoupDragon]

On holiday in Florida aged 14 months, DS1 was head, shoulders and one foot through the bars and "safety netting" on a 5th floor balcony... I feel sick to this day imagining what could have happened.