Is Mommy Stupid?

That's what my son asked me one day. I've told this story many times, but I guess I never posted it. I struggled to keep a straight face and asked "Why do you ask that?"

We have two abandoned railroads near my house and my son and I often hike through the surrounding woods and on the tracks. Sometimes we find interesting things like railroad spikes. They are of course rusty, but not sharp or flaking off. The first time he found a spike he couldn't wait to show it off to his mom.

Her reaction, she recoiled back from him as if he was holding a deadly snake, she yelled to put that dirty rusty thing down. He wanted to take it to her apartment but she would not have that and said NO! I soothed his hurt ego and said that it would be better to keep it at my house.

So his answer was that "Mommy says that I could get tetanus and die from touching a railroad spike and I just know that's not true". I thought for a moment and rejected my first response "Mommy's not stupid she's just crazy" without saying it out loud. So I gave him the scientifically honest answer as I always do - "A long time ago people could get very sick and die from tetanus. You should not pick up rusty things with sharp edges because if they cut you and the rust gets into your blood stream you could get an infection. If you got cut from something rusty you should tell us right away and we'd take you to the hospital and you'd get a tetanus shot so you wouldn't get sick. It would hurt, but you'd get better and wouldn't die, not these days, we've been able to treat this for some time. A railroad spike usually doesn't have sharp rusty edges, but always look first and ask if you aren't sure."

One time when we were walking the railroad tracks my son got excited and said "Oh, grandma and I left some spikes here". He was talking about my ex's mother who apparently didn't share her daughter's tetanus phobia. When they found the spikes, she told her own mother NO! So my son put them somewhere he could find them later and we did.

So that's just an example of what my son and I have to put up with. Why don't the courts see this as unhealthy over-protectionism? Well they just like to error on the side of caution, for BIC of course. But then by definition "unhealthy over-protectionism" is an unhealthy over reaction, it is NOT in the best interest of the child (BIC) at all.

But that's just common sense and that has no place in the justice system (jqism).