electrical safety (and the lack thereof)

[svobodo]

This is mainly of interest for Tyoko but should also be read by others in the UK who has kids:
http://www.fatallyflawed.org.uk/

(Can't recall seeing these when I lived in the UK though)

Comments

[tyoko]

Actually, I've never seen those either.

I can kinda understand the motivation, though. I've been caught flat-footed so many times by people telling me about things I should be doing for my daughter, ways I'm supposed to be nurturing her or improving her environment, that if someone told me all the responsible parents put socket protectors in all the power outlets, I'd be feeling so guilty about not knowing something so important to my child's safety I'd just go out and buy them anyway even though I know about the terminal shielding mechanism in the sockets.

It's weird having a child in the twenty first century. So much information is thrown at you, only about a third of which is pure, evidence based science borne through generations of effort and bitter experience. Another third is pure hateful superstition, from insecure people with a desire to gain stature as a wise advisor without really understanding their own ignorance. The last third is the worst, things that are not quite proven or disproven, things that are probably nothing but are probably a good idea. The volume of all that advice is so incredible, and the social expectations upon modern parents so great, that it's hard to objectively judge the accuracy of any of it, and harder still to not be simply overwhelmed.

Also: The formatting of that website, it's childish use of overemphasis and it's celebrity quotes as bone fide evidence, makes it look like a chain letter. The point it makes may be valid, but it presents its advice in the same high-and-mighty moralistic tones a hoax might use. Given this whole mess of conflicting advice to parents comes about when unreliable guidance can't be told apart from accurate information, this website probably doesn't help the cause much.