To ask for your children “near misses”

[Chattycat78]

Earlier today I was wrapping a present and so I was putting the kitchen scissors back in the cupboard after i finished. However I dropped them on the floor on the way back to the cupboard. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren’t for the fact that my 19 month old was near me when I did it!

Now I can’t stop thinking “what if”- what if they had hit him, especially with the sharp end! I’m
Guessing they could have done him some real damage.

I know I need to learn from it rather than “what if” but it isn’t stopping me.

Has this type of thing ever happened to anyone else?

1 - children with DP - waiting at pelican crossing with stationary queue of their side of road. Green man on, traffic on other side of road obstructed by high vehicle. Children walk out, youngest skips out at which point car on other side of road speeds through red light missing DD by a metre - I was not there - have horrible images in my head

2 - I WAS there for this one, DP was not - memories of this bring me out in a cold sweat. I was with my cousin and her family having a picnic by the River Thames on a lovely summers day. I was in a large canadian type canoe with my cousin and two of our children. Slow flowing stretch of thames in Oxfordshire. Other children were on river bank with two other adults.

Out of nowhere a herd of bulls come running down to the river bank. Where they came from we have no idea. Other adults grab their children leaving my youngest (4 years old & same child as in 1 above) standing there with 10 bulls running full tilt either side of her - less than a metre either side of her. I was in the middle of the river and totally helpless. I have NEVER ever been so scared in life and hope never to be again. DD stood totally frozen to the spot - once the bulls had run past, she ran off into the bushes to join the cowering adults

.......... doesn't come close to the things that happened to me and my siblings in the 70s/80s. Can't believe we are all still alive

One that sticks in my mind that makes me feel sad about every time...
I have twins and when they were about 10 months I was at breaking point with tiredness, everyone kept saying how they should be sleeping through by now and I felt a failure so one night at bedtime I decided to try ‘controlled crying’ I sat on the top step outside their bedroom listening to them crying for about half hour and then it went quiet. I crept in and discovered they had both been violently sick everywhere...I had to wake them up to clean them up and they carried on being projectile sick...knowing they had been feeling unwell and sick all over themselves and fallen asleep in it makes me feel like the worst parent in the world.

Mine is a near miss that happened to me as a child.

My DF took me on a bike ride around our town, I must have been around 6 at the time. I'd only just learnt how to ride a 'proper' grown up bike. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have been riding around on the roads at such a young age and being so inexperienced on a bike, but lesson learnt. We come to a T junction, and DF yells at me from behind me to put my brakes on. Problem is, no one had showed me where the brakes were on my bike . I expect DM thought DF would have shown me! So I go shooting across the road to the other side, both of us screaming. Thankfully, no cars were coming or it would have ended very differently for me! DF was a typical man who didn't want to show his emotions. He was trembling.

Safe to say we wheeled our bikes home

Dd, about 9, came in one morning and said ‘I can’t explain what happened, come and look’. She had fallen asleep with a lamp on her top bunk. It had burnt a hole in her duvet and through to the mattress. We figured out that she had woken up in the night, because she felt something hot, as she sat up her duvet must have covered it and removed the oxygen from the fire (plus of course the mattress and duvet were presumably fire retardant), then she went back to sleep until the morning. Gives me complete shivers as we could easily have lost her that night. Hugs to anyone reading this who has had a child seriously injured or lost through an accident. But I do think it is good to share near misses, so you realise how important things are like anchoring bookcases, or in our case ensuring lights don’t get too hot. Same dd once went over to a neighbours house and seriously burnt her hand on a bulb climbing up a bunk, and also poured boiling water over herself making me a cup of tea more recently (she is still small in stature and needs a stool to safely use the kettle we figured out, otherwise its tricky to pour).

3 year old ds escaped the house and ran across road, narrowly missed being hit by a car. The driver shouted at me while I cried. :-(

2 year old ds1 climbed out of first floor window. DH (it was on his watch this time) found him sitting on the ledge with his legs dangling over the edge.

I don't have kids (which is just as well, as knowing me I'd probably drop them before we'd even left the hospital ) but I fell head over heels down a set of uncarpeted wooden stairs aged 4 or 5 and hit my head on the concrete at the bottom - I screamed my head off but was absolutely fine, didn't even need a trip to hospital. I can still remember the feeling of everything spinning round me as I tumbled down!

I made a 'kite' out of paper and string and tried to fly it out of my bedroom window, by dragging a chair over so I could reach. My mum came in to find me bent over at a 90 degree angle with my top half hanging out the first floor window. The bollocking I got afterwards is one of my earliest memories

Around the same age I wanted to get a book down from the top of my floor to ceiling bookshelf. I piled a stack of books on my desk chair and climbed onto it, overbalanced and grabbed hold of the bookshelf, which wasn't attached to the wall. It started swaying and luckily I had the sense to let go - got some massive cuts on my back, but nothing compared to what would have happened if I'd brought it down on top of me. To this day I still don't think I've confessed to my parents how I cut myself.

I ate about fifty ibuprofen, thinking they were sweets, and didn't tell anyone when I got stomach ache for days as I thought they'd be cross with me for stealing. I was so incredibly lucky it was ibuprofen and not paracetamol

As a young teenager I also knocked a sharp knife off the counter, jumped back and watched as it embedded itself point down in the laminate floor where my foot had just been. I also used to regularly clamber out of my first floor bathroom window at night, only the top half of which opened, and perch on the sill to look at the view (still haven't told my parents about that one either - can you see a theme here..?) I'm amazed I'm still alive really

On a more serious note, a relative of mine accidentally hanged himself when he was a teenager, and would almost certainly have died had his mum not called him and gone to check why he wasn't coming down. He was in a coma that was expected to last up to several months and his family were told he might have massive brain damage when he woke up, to the point where he might not be able to function at all. Three days later he was sitting up in bed chatting away, absolutely fine apart from needing physio and slurring words occasionally. Humans are amazingly resilient!

My eldest DD 10 had a phase of making orange squash ice cubes to suck and when I was out my DH let my then 7 year old have one not really thinking about it. When I arrived back home there were 3 traumatised faces as she had seriously chocked on it and only my DH holding her upside down in the air and properly thumping her back had dislodged it. My eldest is still terrified if her sister coughs too much and jumps up to check her.
I blame myself as I am quite careful but this one genuinely slipped my net.

A friend had bought me a bath seat for DS (then 5/6 months). It had four sticky pads on the bottom that kept it secure to the bath (cannot remember for the life of me what they are called). He was happily splashing and he kicked down too hard, the front 2 sticky pads came unstuck and he flew backwards (still in the seat), his head went under the water, he was about to take a huge breathe and cry. Luckily i was never more than an arms length away and very quickly lifted him out of the seat, cuddled and patted him on the back. I cried and cried and cried. The bath seat was faulty and i blamed myself for ages, but these things happen and most of us are lucky for them not to become serious!

Mine was in a hotel abroad. We were walking up to our room on the third floor and my four year old was walking just in front of me. He tripped and put out his hand to the baluster (the vertical part of the railing and yes, I did just look that up) and to my horror, it wasn't attached at the bottom and just swung out. I just grabbed him before he plunged down the stairwell. Thank god I was actually watching him and was close enough to reach.

DS was about 8 months old, put him on changing table to do nappy, but I dropped it. Bent down to pick it up, he decided to flip over off the side of the table and hit the floor.

There was also one time I forgot to strap the car seat in properly. Normally I would strap in then load the buggy into the car - this day it was hammering down with rain so I got the seat in the car quickly so I could load up and just went into autopilot and drove home without strapping it in.

We used to have single glazed wood framed windows which rattled and were rickety. I near simultaneously shit and puked when a neighbour knocked to say one of my twins, then aged about 18 months or so, had climbed the window and was dangling out.

A few years later, neighbour (different one) knocks and has our one year old in his arms. One of his three year old brothers had opened the front door and let him out - thank god it was summertime and our bright was outside as about three houses down from us is a very busy road. Again, nearly threw up. I’m not good when these things happen - it’s the near misses where I panic.

Just to say, windows were replaced as soon as we could afford it and have childproof locks - door has a bolt at the top which is unreachable.

I am usually extremely risk averse due to family being in the police/healthcare and hearing awful stories. However I stupidly relaxed one year on holiday........

We were on a busy beach and dd 5 and dd 14 were playing together about 10 metres or so from us, ds 10 was playing right next to us. We leaned back a bit and closed our eyes enjoying the sun. When we looked again, we could not see younger dd. DH ran over and older dd said she had asked her to play with ds as she wanted to play alone. However she did not watch to see if younger dd had actually got to us. We couldn't see her anywhere! We searched all round then DH went up to where there was a police hut to raise the alarm. He had to use a phone and wait on the police coming who were nearby, myself and ds kept searching. I had older dd wait at our spot in case she came back to there herself.

By this stage I was almost hysterical, thinking she had either got in the water or being taken (had watched series 1 of the missing the week before where a child goes missing on holiday). A group of teens started to help, I had taken pics of her just before so was showing people those and eventually someone said they saw her and pointed up the beach saying she went that way - my first question was 'was she alone?' She said yes and I was so relieved!

Anyway kept walking that direction and eventually found her, a lady was walking her down towards me. She had found her sitting on the ground crying a way up at the top of the beach, dd said she was running in circles looking for us and her legs got tired

Dd is quite clingy and not a runner ever so it honestly was the most terrifying experience, I still get upset thinking about it! I would say it was a good 15 mins, maybe more, the police had arrived and started searching too!