teaching our kids to watch out

While buying pretty board books and egg-cup pin cushions and other local goodies today, a good friend and I talked about how all families are crazy in their own ways, and that we should just try the best we can to pass on what we know without inflicting too much psychological damage on our children. She sent me here for a bloggy example of a mother trying to pass on important advice to her daughter.

I don't have a daughter yet (and, no, internet—this is not an announcement that I will anytime soon), but I can imagine the stress involved in showing your kids how to watch out for things/people/places that will hurt them. Which is part of the reason I like the board book we found:













Seahorses, fish, shells, and boats: all standard characters in an ocean. But urchins are often overlooked—even though they're ubiquitous in the part of the ocean that a baby might become acquainted with.

This page reminds me of the time my husband and I went swimming in a little ocean cove, without realizing that the tide was going out of shallow water. So many urchins had set up camp in that cove that we couldn't just stand up and walk out of the water without cutting up our feet. So we had to make little swimmy breaks for shore when a wave came in. We were so very, dangerously close to those urchins.

When I DO have kids, I want them to know about urchins from the time they chew on their books. You know, so they can watch out.