Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/03/children-are-stupid-be-smart.html
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Not really much of an origin story, is it?
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Children are ignorant. Stupidity is learned.
I don’t understand recalling the dresser, of course it’s going to topple if it isn’t secured to the wall.
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IKEA dressers and bookshelves come with brackets that will affix the furniture to the wall. I’d still consider it a non-solution but it does make for a safer room, what a parent needs to do is make sure the drawers cannot be opened or climbed by a toddler. For a bookshelf i dunno, i think they’d pull out the shelf divider before they were able to climb anywhere.
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This story reminds me of the house i grew up in. The dresser and closet were one giant unit that had been built into a room wall, it was pretty functional with tons of storage space. However me and my brother would get on top of the dresser and would jump onto our beds across the room. We broke the beds a few times over the years, so yeah. Kids do dumb shit.
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My younger brother and I opened all the drawers in a dresser once and used them like a set of stairs.
Well, tried to use them. It got a little off-balance about halfway up, and totally keeled over a few seconds later. The bottle of talcum powder that fell out and got crushed made quite the mess.
I think that I’m actually going to skip this video; the still frame looks bad enough for me.
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The dresser looks like the same 8-drawer Hemnes model from IKEA that’s in my 2.5-year-old daughter’s room, which was not subject to recall (though a bunch of other Hemnes models were). I had thought it was too low and heavy for her to tip, but this video shows that in the case of completely empty drawers and two climbing toddlers, it can still be done.
That kid was only saved by a pink ball that happened to be in front of the dresser:
[quote=“arteitle, post:8, topic:92175”]
8-drawer Hemnes model from IKEA
[/quote]It also comes with a wall anchor that is not installed here:
Even if it is second hand getting a replacement is trivial and cheap.
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It’s going to topple because it’s made out of wood light enough you can flat pack and carry home and then assemble with one person. Sure it’s going to topple, that’s why everything is secured to the wall in our son’s room. However my wife’s dresser is solid oak, arts and crafts style, that takes three decent sized men to move up a flight of stairs. You’d be more likely to break the bottom out of the drawer before it toppled over. Forty plus years ago a large majority of furniture was made out of real wood.
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To be fair my son has this dresser and I wouldn’t trust the “safety” strap that came with it. We secured it with an aftermarket steel cable setup from Amazon. I used the nylon strap for the night stand.
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Thanks for the reminder that this applies to people doing eldercare, too. I just sent a couple of links to a relative whose spouse is descending into dementia.
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I doubt the two kids would be able to reach the tensile load of the braided nylon. It’s pretty strong stuff, and hold a couple hundred pounds on their own. The drywall attachment is the weak point, and I don’t know what wall anchor they use.
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I blame Disney: http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/c/cd/Peterpan-disneyscreencaps-85.jpg
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Pffft…
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Children are ignorant. Stupidity is learned.
Because it’s hard for me to resist lexicology discussions… 
Yeah - I agree that ignorant might be a better word choice than stupid. To me, stupid seems kind of like a more permanent or semi-permanent condition. Assuming stupid basically means unintelligent. Whereas a child’s lack of experience and undeveloped brain are temporary conditions.
Although I have to disagree on learning stupidity. I don’t think you can learn how to be stupid. I think it’s kind of the opposite, really. I think of stupidity as the inability to learn. I.e. unintelligent. But that’s just my take. YMMV.
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Hmmm… kids are ignorant, not stupid. They are little experimenting machines, trying to figure out how the world works. Nothing stupid in that. They also soak up knowledge at that age like no one’s business.
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Eh. Semantics. Ignorant implies they actively ignore information that is relevant to a given situation. Stupid better describes the situation here. They didn’t think things through. They don’t have the knowledge required to understand. It’s fine. We forgive them for being stupid. But they’re stupid. With time, maybe they won’t be so stupid. Although the boy here, having had a dresser fall on his head, might have some more difficulty than others.
No, ignorant tends to imply a lack of knowledge, which is what most children suffer from, only having been on the planet a short time.
vs.
Children’s brains soak up more knowledge in their first 3 years of life, much more effectively, than most of us do in our adult lives. They learn how to talk, eat, dress, walk, read, do basic math, understanding basic concepts like gravity and physics, how to interact with others - basically they learn how to be human in an incredibly short period of time. When they hurt themselves like in the video, it’s largely because they are testing out the world around them in order to better understand it and function within it.
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Agree on denotation. I used a jarring phrase to get people to read the article and think about children and elders in their care. Made some people on Facebook reallllllly mad in the process! I hope they bolted down their furniture right after being mad.
On a related topic, I’m always amazed to go into California bedrooms and see people have hung heavy art or shelves above their kids’ headboards. Earthquake 101, people!
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