The other day I saw a man dropping his daughter off at kindy. He drove near the kindy. He couldn’t get right up to the front gate because there was another car ahead of him. The girl who was sitting at the back opened the car door herself and walked a short way to the gate on her own. She is my daughter’s classmate.

So far I have not seen any other parents do this. Most of them get down, open the door for the kid and walk the kid to the gate. I do this too. I do this out of my own fear because of a few near misses when it comes to car doors.

As a result, I do not allow the kids to open the car doors on their own. The car doors have child locks on and I open the door for them to enter and exit the car. Let me talk about the near misses.

1. My sis was on the driver’s seat of her MPV and she had swung the automatic back doors to close. It almost closed on my girl’s hands had I not jumped in on time to pull her away.

2. I was quarrelling with hubby over some dunno what small matter and I was still arguing while we were unloading our boot of groceries and then I slammed the boot door onto my girl’s fingers. I slammed really hard. We had to unlock the boot door because her fingers were trapped. Fortunately her fingers were caught in between a gap! My heart stopped that moment. I don’t remember what we were arguing about now but I will never forget that heart stopping moment. Thats why they say when in a fight, stop and think. Is this really important 5 years from now? If its not, forget it. Obviously its not because I can’t even remember what we were fighting about now but it almost caused my girl her fingers.

3. My boy had put his fingers in the space in between the door hinge and my husband almost closed the car door without realising it.

Coming back to car doors. As a result, I do not allow the kids to open or close the doors on their own. I am afraid that they may accidentally close the doors on their own or each other’s fingers.

I wonder at which age will it be safe to allow kids to handle car doors on their own? I wonder am I being over protective over my kids sometimes, raising molly coddled kids. I wonder is the man whose daughter got out so confidently and walked on her own to the kindy gates raising an independant child or is he being foolhardy?


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