Colinsmum, we never gave DD a hot glue gun at that age. Nope-- we gave her eye and ear protection and a shot at the scroll saw instead.
We also were supervising-- much the way that the cucumber slicing anecdote reveals.
In all seriousness, ITA with
Look, humans are really bad at risk assessment. We are transfixed by possible dangers that seem really vivid to us, and are extremely insensitive to information about actual probabilities.
It's when you get complacent about real risk levels that (IME) you get injured. Being immured to the risk is the problem, in most instances of
rational risk-taking. No, I'm not talking about letting a five year old build a zip-line in a concrete back yard and ride it with no protective gear. Of course not.
But my DH and I neither one have
ever suffered a work-related injury, not in our cumulative 60+ years of work around radiological/nuclear, biological/infectious, electrical, mechanical, chemical, fire/explosion and thermal hazards, some of them
quite extreme. We've worked around explosives, around hi-vac systems that were old-school glass walls-of-doom, etc. Nary a problem.
Nope--
all of my injuries have been as a result of doing things that I just lost track of risk--
in my KITCHEN. Seriously. Burns, cuts, etc. Same with DH. He's never had a work accident or a woodshop one. It's the routine things that we do which are actually high-risk-- because we get complacent about those risks and we quit paying attention all the time.
This is the precise reason why people will drive rather than flying because flying
scares them-- it's about the illusion of safety with a locus of control. Same thing applies here with kids. There's not much that is LIKELY to happen to my DD when she's not being supervised that I could (realistically)
prevent happening to her when she IS.
It's all so very individual. I'll worry
less about DD operating a motor vehicle in some respects than I did about her using a sharp chef's knife-- but that's because of her lack of muscle strength in her hands. She's VERY cautious and hypervigilant about her surroundings, which I anticipate will translate well into defensive driving skills.
