Are you wrapping your kids in cotton wool?

You will have different levels of risk you are willing and comfortable to live with, but unless you allow your child to try things, how will you know when they are capable?

During a family party, we had a number of friends over, many of whom had young children. These children ranged in age from six month to two and a half years.

Our garden, at the time, had a patio area surrounded by a small wall, which was approximately 20cm high, this wall supported the lawn, which was where we were gathered.

I heard a gasp of breath as one of the parents saw one of the toddlers heading for the wall; the parent of the child glanced over her shoulder and shrugged, “oh he’ll be alright, he knows about steps.”

The child got to the edge, stopped, looked over, turned round, and after dangling his legs over the side, stood up on the patio, and wandered off.

The other mother, who’s child was a year older, could not believe it, and said, “I would not have trusted mine to do that, even now.”

My eldest was only three when she fell down our stairs. My blood turned to ice and everything went into s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n.

Fortunately it was only the last few steps, so she was fine.

When she was younger, we had a stair gate and had taught her to turn around and slide down on her belly, but the time had come when we had to let her be a big girl.

Before this she had walked safely down the stairs lots of times before.

I considered my options; do I put the gate back up?

Do I insist that she always holds my hand, or goes down on her bottom?

Reality eventually kicked in, it was not going to be realistic to put those measures in place.

Instead I helped brush her off, gave her a hug and suggested she take it a little more slowly next time.

Shortly afterwards, my boss (at that time), fell down his stairs, seriously straining his leg, I do not think he would have taken kindly to me offering to hold his hand from then on, though I think he did have to use his bottom for a while!