@Linkat,
I think that anyone who's a parent should understand that your children will do what they feel led to do at any given moment despite what mommy might say about it over and over and over again.
When my kids were little, my husband worked twenty-four hour shifts in an emergency room. So if I wanted to take a bath, I had to either have them with me in the bathroom or not have them in my sight or not be in their sight. When my daughter was about three and my son six, I finally decided I could take a bath with both of them sitting in front of the tv with strict instructions not to open the door, answer the phone or touch the woodstove, etc., etc.
I had put windchimes on the doorknob so I'd hear if it opened, and I did hear it open and shut, so I threw a towel around me and I came downstairs to find that not only had they opened the door, but they'd let a man in who'd said he had an appointment to service the furnace (through the screen porch window- my son was very specific telling me he hadn't opened the door until the man told him through the window he had an appointment) - I was standing there in a towel with my two kids and the strange man they'd let in the house - because he'd said he had an appointment....it made little difference that I'd told them over and over and over again not to open the door.
They also never touched the woodstove - but one time I did find a tissue burning on top of it - they'd dropped tissues on the woodstove to see if they'd catch fire - but no, they didn't TOUCH the woodstove - so yeah, they'd not done anything I had told them not to - they'd just thought of something to do that I'd NEVER thought of myself in order to tell them not to do it.
They might know not to do something, but just like all of us who know not to do a lot of things - sometimes if we feel like it and we can get away with it - we do it.
I almost had to laugh at the tissue on the woodstove thing. My sister and I once accidentally set the kitchen curtains on fire because we were lighting napkins from the stove and then quickly trying to blow them out. We didn't blow one out fast enough - threw it in the sink - and it caught the curtains on fire before we could turn the water on. She filled up a glass with water and threw it at the curtains - that put the fire out...but we were like eight and ten years old and had been told over and over and over again not to play with fire, but we thought we could get away with it and we did it.
It's amazing when you think of it that most normal kids make it through in one piece.
