Once upon a time, I had a beautiful baby girl that grew into a toddler. This toddler wasn’t necessarily advanced in learning her ABCs or numbers, but this girl had all of the street smarts needed to break her mom.
Sound familiar?
I bought child locks of every variety when she was ten months old and capable of walking. Those locks were not a deterrent – they were the ultimate challenge for this little girl. Every single lock we tried she would figure out within a week. She was smart and those locks only made her smarter.
One day I could hear her getting into the refrigerator. I quickly jumped up and pulled her out and then tied the fridge shut with some string she couldn’t reach because the child lock obviously was not working. A few hours later, I was folding laundry when suddenly the little genius came running from the kitchen through the living room, a trail of chocolate syrup pouring out of the bottle in her hands. I entered the kitchen expecting to find an open fridge but the fridge was still tied up and closed.
I asked this little sneaky snook where the bottle came from and she opened the cupboard right next to the fridge to reveal a whole stash of condiments she must have stashed before I first caught her. She had outsmarted me again and all within five seconds.
Months later, when she figured out how to open doors, we put child locks on every door in the house and when that wasn’t enough, we started locking them. Our beautiful girl quickly figured out that our type of locks could be unlocked with a butter knife. Now a few of our doors have a child lock covered in duct tape which has so far been effective in preventing her from getting into my makeup or craft things. I give it a couple of weeks before she has peeled away all of the duct tape though.
My toddler is smarter than me and the more I try to stop her, the smarter she becomes. I am at a loss and hope that these street smarts will pay off one day when she has grown into a high-end jewel thief.
