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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

This should not be surprising to anyone who has a preschooler. They're also way better at problem-solving than most people expect, it's just that you often don't want them solving their "problems".

When my kid was 18 months old, we had gated him off from a playroom with a bunch of toys used by his older brother that were not baby-safe. We had a DoorMonkey [1] placed up high, about 5 feet tall, so that only adults could reach. My kid gets a chair from across the room, pushes it next to the door, climbs up on top of it, unlatches the DoorMonkey, pushes open the door, climbs down from the chair, enters the playroom, looks at me, and says "Bye!" At that moment my wife gets out of the bathroom, sees the tableau, says "____? What are you doing?" and my toddler says "Uh oh."

[1] https://doormonkey.com/

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I have a similar story about our child, at a similar age! He waited until I'd left the room before dragging a chair away from the dining table and then climbing it, in order to reach a toy I'd accidentally placed on a high shelf on the book-case.

When I came back he immediately knew he'd been caught. Though I wasn't at all mad, it was a wakeup-call that from then on placing things too high was probably a challenge for him, rather than an absolute protection.

We covet that which we can see. Put it in a box and it ceases to exist.

100%, my son will be 2 next month and he's even started saying his own name in the tone we do when we're telling him it's not safe and then giggling to himself!

He can recognise a lot of birds, trees, flowers (daffodils, primroses, hyacinths, tulips) coming out in the garden at the moment, only needs to be told what it is once or twice for it to stick.

My kid did the exact same thing with the phrase "be careful!" in the same intonation I used

Except in her case it meant "Witness me!!, as I do something exceedingly dangerous!", or alternatively "Look at the aftermath of this dangerous thing I just did, see the blood?"

Mine is two years, three months and has recently started trying to loid the magnetic child safety cabinet locks in the kitchen with any piece of strong cardboard she finds. I do not know how she came to the realization that that should work, but it definitely feels like we underestimated her.

Luckily she's only succeeded once so far, but nevertheless we're trying to figure out how to make sure the knives are safely out of reach (because she's also figured out how to climb the counter with a chair, obviously) without it becoming too inconvenient for us as well.

My kid is about the same age. We recently bought a safety lock to prevent him from getting into cupboard under our sink. It had great reviews on Amazon.

The first time he went into the kitchen after I had installed it, he notices it immediately, walks straight up to it, grasps it with both hands like an adult would, and has it unlatched within 5 seconds. He then proceeds to look at me like "Is this some sort of test?"

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