I am a helicopter mother, but even helicopter moms turn their head away for a few seconds.
I looked away from my three-year-old daughter for about ten seconds.
When I turned around, she was trying to sit on the space heater. Lucky for us, I refused to buy one of the cheaper space heaters. I bought a space heater that was cool to the touch. It had tip-over features that would turn the space heater off, even if it started to wobble. There was another feature that prevented overheating. When I turned around and saw her starting to sit on the space heater, I picked her up and told her no. I told her the space heater was hot, and that she would get hurt. She was old enough to understand the words, and I wasn’t worried she was just listening to the words and not understanding. Two minutes later, she yelled mommy and told me, ‘not hot’. She had her hands on the space heater and was letting me know I was wrong. I slapped her fingers and told her not to touch them. She cried, but she pointed at the space heater and told me it wasn’t hot. I took the space heater out of the living room and put it away. I wasn’t going to risk the space heater being hot one day and her getting burnt, knowing I couldn’t keep my eyes on her twenty-four hours a day. I turned up the thermostat, knowing she wouldn’t get burnt when the heat turned on. With ductless HVAC, all the heating surfaces were high on the wall.