Screening technique.

Christy P has a blog post up telling a story about her kids in which my husband Mark and I play a minor role.

Several years ago, before I had any kids, we had a visit from friend and commenter bearing and her husband who already had kids.  The visiting dad [Mark]  noticed the giant grated air intake vent in our living room and said "You should screen this because kids are going to throw stuff down there." 

We didn't do it. Our first child was a girl, and she never put anything down there....

Read the rest.

We often think that our parenting styles influence our children's personalities and behavior, but I think it's the other way around most of the time.

Comments

[Kelly]

My daughter once peed down the air vent in her room when she was 3. :(

[Arwen]

You're so right. Everything that we baby-proofed the first time around, we did because my nephew got into it, not because our daughter did. Now that we've got a toddler boy, it's a whole different ballgame. I can't believe how much he keeps us on our toes.

[bearing]

Kelly, ew. :-)

[Christy Porucznik]

The screen isn't incredibly well attached, and if he tries he can probably defeat it, but so far the visual barrier seems to be enough. We'll see what his next trick is.

BTW - he also loves to press the *%&^ buttons on the oven. Wish I could turn off the beeping noise because then he would stop. The birthday pie was almost wrecked from his manipulations.

Remember when you assigned one of your children to press 'cancel' when the other pressed any other button on my oven?!

[bearing]

Can't Z do the cancel pushing? Or is it too distressing to her to watch Q breaking the rules? :-)

[Christy P]

Just today she started doing the cancel pushing because he is in love with the broil option.