There are some issues in the news today about the need to secure dressers and other large pieces of furniture to the walls if you live with young children. There has recently been some serious accidents that injured children so the Hospital Sainte-Justine in Montreal is sending a warning to parents.
The subject is serious and yet it made me smile when I saw a demonstration on tv this morning. You see, I used to be one of those short kids who climb on everything to reach what they need. I figured I could reach the content on the top of my dresser by opening the drawers and creating a staircase. I would try to do this quietly and keep my balance but it would never work and I’d think « oh, oh » as the dresser threw me to the floor and fell on my body, the content of its drawers flying off in the room. My mom would come running, lift the dresser off of me, check if I was okay (I always was, lucky me) and then give me a hard time.
I wouldn’t try it for a couple of months and would forget how dangerous it was… until I really needed something that was on top of my dresser and gave it another shot. « Oh oh ». Same scenario.
My mother would get scared every time but my parents never considered securing the dresser to the wall. They just trusted that I’d be smart enough to not try it again. Probably not the best idea but things were different then. There wasn’t this constant sense of danger surrounding kids in the seventies.
I don’t climb anymore now. I just jump, aiming for the object of my desire, coordinating the grip and the landing. You should see me catch a box of cereal from the top cupboard of the kitchen, or a roll of toilet paper that has reached the back of the bathroom closet. There should be special Olympics for short people. I’d rock.
hahaha! moi je grimpais sur mon bureau/comptoir pour atteindre les biblioth�ques encastr�es. une fois j’ai perdu l’�quilibre et je me suis accroch�e � une tablette, pour me rendre compte (au ralenti, comme toujours dans ces moments-l�), que la tablette �tait flottante. eh bien nous avons flott� ensemble jusqu’au sol. boum! en quelque part, je suis heureuse d’avoir grandi au moment o� on laissait encore les enfants se faire mal. aujourd’hui je n’ai pas peur de la douleur, et j’ai des cicatrices partout. pis? mon gar�on de huit ans, lui, a peur d’avoir peur d’avoir mal!
I think lucky for me, I wasn’t active enough to climb everywhere, but I was adept at falling down stairs …
Yay for Olympics for short people! Count me in! Can I bring my stepping stool?
« Can I bring my stepping stool? »
Sure, Steph. You’ll need it to get to the top of the podium!
am i the only one who had a growth chart growing up, who wrote down her growth through teenage years and who thought that she’d be a couple inches taller if all went according to the chart? i’ve been feeling cheated for half my life! (especially since i redistribute the weight in my mind and i’d look so stunning!)
Attaching furniture to the wall is necessary, but it’s a real pain in the butt when you want to rearrange the room or move. Some of the necessary anchors leave some good sized holes in the walls.
The news report said it was a television that fell on the kid. Made me wonder if TV design will somehow be modified. Or is it a moot point since we will all have flatscreens in a decade.
I also saw on the news that another child also got crushed by a huge armoire (she was trying to open it). Scary stuff! Furniture used to be pretty big. Weren’t kids also getting hurt in the past, before televisions?
A decade? Frank, what the heck are you waiting for? ;-)
But seriously, I doubt there’s anything on televisions that can be modified. It’s all about what you put the television on.
I think we should start up the « Clumsy Olympics, » for people to knock over furniture, fall down stairs, slam doors on their fingers, walk into walls, etc.
…to be precise, in the case that’s been on the news, the television was on top of a tall chest of drawers that wasn’t anchored to the wall. Presumably the kid started climbing the drawers, which made it fall forward and the TV tumbled forward with it.
i kinda think that if you use drawers as stairs (no offense) you deserve to get hurt to learn your lesson… maybe it’s just me. i’m not into protecting kids so much as i am into getting them to live for real and get actual lessons from experience… it’s a rather radical theory in the world we live in;-)
I used the kitchen draweres as stairs to get at the cookies. I got to the counter, stood up, got the cookies from the top shelf, turned, lost my balance and fell, bellyflop style on the floor. I tried to break my fall with my arms and broke my collar bone.
A while later it happened again.
Point of the story? Don’t bolt things down. Watch your kids, accept that they’ll still slip by you and pray that the accidents that will happen don’t seriously maim them.
I had built-in drawers in my bedroom as a kid, and successfully climbed them all the time! However, now when I need to reach something up high, I carefully climb on top of my dresser by turning my back to it and doing the little hop-sit, so I am sitting on top. Then it’s easy just to spin around, get into a kneeling position, then stand up. Used to do *that* trick to get on the kitchen counters!