Over-protectiveness drives me crazy!

I think I am one of the least "protective" parents in the world. I have a five year old, a two year old and now a two month old. They're all boys, and when they get wound up, they absolutely drive me crazy. But I love them to death, and of course I don't want them to get hurt. But on the other hand I know they have to get hurt to understand the world.(Somebody once told me that you don't really know how to ride a horse until you get thrown off the horse - same sort of idea.)

I really get annoyed at people that seem to think I am jeopardizing my sons' lives in some way and try to "fix" my way of raising MY kids. I remember clearly times when strangers or friends told me or my kids what to do (or more likely what not to do). I feel I have a very good sense of what my children can do, what they are capable of, how far they'll go. If I think my child isn't in danger, I don't think a stranger should interfere.

A perfect example is "playing with matches". I loved to teach my kids about fire, about how to get fire from a simple thing like a match, etc. I teach them, and they learn. I show them, tell them about how useful it is, how dangerous it could be, let them try, let them touch the fire (which they do not want to do), etc. Playing with fire is the best! When we go camping, my kids absolutely love the fire pit, the glowing embers, they hate the smoke in their eyes.

It's not like I would let a 9 month old roam around the fire pit. I realized that at that stage he is not ready, doesn't have the mental capacity to see danger, understand my warnings. But as soon as I feel the child is ready, I let him explore - even the dangerous.

Of course the next big thing is the knife. My two year old child loves to cut things. I let him help me in the kitchen and he loves the "tools". When we are chopping vegetables, I let him do the mushrooms (with a real knife), and he is getting quite good at it. Of course I had to teach him how to do it and warn him about cutting his fingers, to keep them away. But a knife is one of those important tools that allows us be human. If I think he's ready, I just go for it.

Another example of the "over protectiveness" just happened today. My five year old was very cautious until about a month ago. I don't know what happened, but now he is an expert climber and tries to climb everything in site. He seems to have great balance and sense of what he can climb and what is unsafe. I pretty much let him do what he wants (to a degree of course), because I want him to explore further, and not be constrained by his previous timidness and fear. And of course, today he climbed our stationary bike and stood up on the seat. Not really anything exciting, but our friend started to panic and say - "Get off, you might hurt yourself..." Ya, he might hurt himself, but he won't learn unless he does.

Sometimes I know that I am also overprotective of my children. For instance, I couldn't let go of my son to let him swim on his own. It took my husbands guts and a swimming instructor to show me that its okay if they go under water for a short period of time. After that initial shock, I realized that the kids didn't die, and without me letting go, they will never learn. Ever since that realization, my children have flourished in swimming, and my oldest son is the best swimmer in his grade.

There seem to be so many rules that people made up, and now we need to follow as parents. But I find it more and more that I don't like to follow some or maybe most of them:

1. Don't let the new born child support its weight on his legs - keep him horizontal for the first months of his life."
With all my kids, this was impossible. Right away they wanted to use their legs to push themselves off our laps. How could I not let them do this natural thing. In fact I promote it and keep my two month old on his legs all the time holding only onto his hands. This allows him to practice his balance and works on his leg strength. People are usually in shock when they see me do this.

2. "Don't forget the hat on the little one!".
Hahahaha. This for me is the funniest one of all. When our first son was four months old, we went to visit Poland. There all the people were obsessed with the "hat" on the kids. We rarely put a hat on our child. Of course when there was son, we protected him with a blanket, but the hat in Poland was for heat protection (we think). And so after a while, we would put on a hat just to keep people off our back. But why bother with a hat, it he doesn't fuss over the cold? I heard recently that covering your head doesn't in fact protect you from the cold as once thought.

3. "Don't give raw carrots to your child before they're two!"
I remember going to a McDonald's one time with my one and a half year old son at the time with another family. We bought some fries to share. The mother would break off the top and bottom edges of the fries before giving them to the daughter (a few months older than our son). I asked what she was doing, and she explained that she didn't want her daughter to choke on the "hard" top edges of the fries. OH MY GOD! I know another mother that would peel grapes before giving them to her child for the same reason. Can we get any more paranoid? I gave my sons raw whole carrots as soon as they could eat anything (probably before they turned one). They would mostly play with them in they're mouths not knowing what to do, but then once they learned to bite pieces off, they would figure out shortly afterward what they could handle down the throat. If they didn't try on their own, how could they learn? Plus, they couldn't bite hard enough to get big sized pieces off the hard carrots anyway.

Anyway, there are so many of these silly rules. I'm glad I wasn't exposed to them, or else I would have gone mad with trying to follow them when I was bringing up my first son. I get snippets of them once in a while from strangers or friends - but I choose to ignore them now. I follow one rule and that is: I do what I think is right for my children.

So far, I haven't killed or injured or harmed our kids in any way. Quite the opposite, I think our kids are developing very nicely. Now a days I read more and more that these silly "rules" of parenting have no merit to them.

Today I found a great clip on TED about this sort of "over protectiveness" of our kids. I really like it and I agree with the presenter, Gever Tulley, 100%. Enjoy: