I was sitting watching a father of seven (7) children supervising his one year old who could only just walk in a doctor's waiting room. Firstly, he was a good Dad for acting on the idea that children need to be taught appropriate behaviour when they are out. The lesson Dad was trying to teach was not to pull posters off the wall. What Dad was doing was to slap the toddler's hands every time he tried to pull the poster off the wall. He simply slapped the child's hands and said a stern 'no'. It made me wonder if he trained dogs for a living. the Dad did not attempt to remove the child or distract the baby in any way. Children that young do not understand verbal instruction; until they do they need to be removed from what ever it is that is the danger or the item they should not be touching and distracted.
On a sad note; another child has died (the second in the last few days). This little boy found matches in the lounge room and made it to his bedroom where he shut the door and played with the matches striking each just the way he had seen the adults do. The child could barely walk and was just a toddler. Why, oh why, did smokers who know that their bad habit not only impacts upon the lungs of their children not have the common sense to keep the matches out of reach! There is no excuse or reason for this death; it was not an accident.
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