To think this woman is naive?

[AnotherSpinningFuckingRainbow]

This person has just had a newborn baby and claims they will never move any of their numerous ornaments, small and chokeable knicknacks etc, as when children start to toddle, you just teach them not to touch...

AIBU to laugh heartily at this assertion?

Oh god, my two could cause damage or injury in an empty, padded room.

Both walked at 10 months, I remember taking DS to a friend's house at 1ish. Her DS was an angel, her house had ming vases on windowsills, loads of breakable ornaments etc at child height. Her DS never even looked at them, never mind touched them. My DS, well his eyes lit up when he saw it all. I was bloody knackered trying to stop him touching anything. Nightmare.

We never moved anything, but I don't have very interesting children

I'd say mine are free-range! That's why all the dangerous stuff is out of reach.

I once went round to a friends house, deposited ds1 (then 15mo on the floor) at which point he made a bee-line for the electric power drill that was lying, plugged in on the hall floor. We been in the house all of 20 seconds.

My friends quickly removed it but pointed out it had been there a week and their dd (same age) had just ignored it. They also had a low dresser filled with their best chins (blocked door with a chair for the remainder of our visit).

So it does depend on the child. Some are curious, some less so. Mine have always had a fascination with anything electronic/fragile or dangerous (ideally all 3).

*their best china even

Oh and childproof locks never worked with him either. He just yanked them off.

ha ha at "best chins"

Sorry but seeing a drill plugged in like that would give me the heebie jeebies!

They also had a low dresser filled with their best chins

quote of the week anyone?

I had to pick my chin off the floor, believe me

You were just hoping to try on one of the fancy chins, admit it

YABU - people manage it, and some children never show any interest in touching those kind of things. Even if she does have to move things eventually, hoping that they will be lucky enough not to have to isn't laughable, it's what we all do.

FWIW - I found nothing worse when I was pregnant than doom-mongers insisting that they knew better about everything just because they had a child of their own. All children are different and having your own children doesn't make you an expert on anyone else's. It made certain aspects of my pregnancy very depressing to be constantly told that I 'had no idea what I was letting myself in for' about everything from breastfeeding to sleep training.

There are also two sorts of children and I'm a non free-range parent. DS could clear a bookcase full of books in nano seconds, remove every tin from a cupboard, empty every drawer, bang every ornament. Oh it only went on from about 18/20 months to 2.5 but there was a limit to how much one could bear to see moved, broken and the risk to him. Child locks didn't work, he mastered those in a flash - we had to use two child locks. Even the GP looked at him once and said "is there anything wrong with him"? Our sons ended up at the same school and there is nothing like smug smugginess when someone has made a comment like that and has a less successful child .

DD on the other hand was entirely biddable and demolished nothing so the nurture theory doesn't work in my opinon.

DS just needed a lot of exercise, rather like a boisterous puppy although I do think in a less grounded family he could have gone off the rails. He was hard work until he was about 19 went to NZ

Friend of mine said you just had to tell them not to touch, you didn't need to move anything, and with his dd that worked perfectly. They then had a ds who had not read the book detailing this, and was a toucher/fiddler. They moved everything!

Just remembered we had to move the Video player (shows how old ds is now!) from the living room, I swear ds only learned to crawl so he could get to it. He used to do that hands and knees rocking before they crawl thing while staring at it....then one day he finally crawled - right over to the video recorder where he promptly jammed his teething ring in it while looking ever so satisfied.

That's when my nightmare began! AM having another baby this week and praying she is easier.

Oh I do agree about doom-mongers, no idea why people are so negative about child-rearing in general. I didn't laugh or make comments to her, was just rather privately, as she then went on to assert that anyone who moved their objects was a terrible parent who just couldn't be arsed.

And of course it's natural to hope for the best! Not refuting that for a moment.

Yes totally depends on child. Chokey stuff should be moved but this is hard with subsequent children rather than PFBs. DD2 totally ruined a CD player by jamming something in. Didn't even occur to us to have moved it.

Loopy we had the rusk in the video player. At that point we hired a TV for about four years because if anything stupid was done to it they nice man just used to come and replace it. Oh, and TV controls down the loo - that too.

Well, if she's already judging other people's parenting based on their knick-knack positioning, then she is possibly in for a shock! I don't think it would be unreasonable to secretly hope that her baby is one of those who just doesn't give a monkey's about being told no, although I think that encouraging her baby to play with her twigs and pebbly shit would possilby be justified...

Ds never touched anything, didn't go in drawers cupboards. Nothing.

Dd was a completely different kettle of fish, I don't believe in cupboard locks etc but if I ever wanted to leave her on her own for a nanosecond every had to be away and up high.

She put everything in her mouth, one awful day I found her sitting behind the sofa ducking the sugar coating from an ibuprofen I had stupidly left in my handbag, in its packet. Only went to the loo!

I suppose it depends on the child, I didn't move anything and all my 3 managed to learn what they could and couldn't go near pretty quickly, having said that, I don't really have too many breakables at child height anyway but with regards to plugs etc they knew not to touch them, socket covers were pointless as DS1 could take them off himself so he soon got told! Maybe we were just lucky but as I only know about my kids then who's to say whether yabu or not.

DH is still of the opinion that he doesn't need to move things. That's why my stuff is all nice and safe and it's his computer that has had the operating system hacked by our 2yo, his glasses that are broken, his pens that are broken/missing, he who had to apologise to the random person DD phoned, etc.

Children are different, and some people have more patience for saying "No, don't touch that" and dealing with the fallout when it doesn't work. She does leave some of stuff alone some of the time. But too little for my patience.

When you have older children, IME your new baby is surrounded by small objects and bits of tat and you learn to cope. So the way we tend to insistently move things out of reach of a PFB baby is probably overkill.

But on the other hand I'd never leave anything expensive within toddler-reach if I could avoid it, and I have a refrain of "if you don't want it to get broken, don't leave it where she can get it". And we have lost a video player to toast insertion and had a car stereo buggered up by having a 10p piece stuck in it (I have no idea how DC even managed to do that as I would have sworn blind they didn't have an opportunity).

I said a LOT of things when I had a newborn that didn't come to pass ;-)

We have a tier system - I've left things that he can't hurt himself on within reach so we can practice me saying no and him ignoring me. Anything of value or breakable has been moved higher.

All depends.

DS1 - no problem as long as it didn't have buttons. He didn't have any urge to muck about with anything, and he was cruising around the coffee table at 6 months (ie before he had enough going on in his brain to be taught anything!).

DS2 - I already think will be more of a handful and we'll have to move stuff. I'm not going to spend my life telling him no he can't do things, I don't want some things broken, and some things are dangerous to him, so I'll just move them.