In guarding the life of an active and adventurous almost-one-year-old, a parent must utilise all the senses. But there is a special, sixth sense – a sub-sense, if you like – that comes into play for anyone who spends any significant amount of time with children. It’s known as the Blind Eye.

I used the Blind Eye regularly in my life BC (Before Children) when I was a school teacher. On the lunchtime journey from my office to the staffroom, I would walk briskly with sandwich in hand, cup of tea in mind and Blind Eye on full alert.

Ball on the roof? Never saw it.

Grade 4s in the Prep sandpit? Who’s in the what now?

Brawl on the oval? Ah, a lovely game of touch football.

It was a handy survival mechanism that allowed to me to make it to the staffroom with time to eat and recover my strengths adequately to take on double Year 9 prac after lunch. What’s the yard duty teacher for anyway?

Now that my little munchkin is soon to turn one, the Blind Eye is making a comeback. When I see a ball of unbearable cuteness barrelling towards the Tupperware cupboard, the contents of which will certainly keep him quiet and occupied for at least 10 minutes, I suddenly become very busy in the pantry. When he cheekily drops sultanas over the side of his high chair for the fifteenth time and peers over the edge, fascinated to see them lying despondently on the floor, I notice an important window to stare out. When he crawls under the high chair later in the day and triumphantly snacks on aforementioned sultanas, I find I have laundry that needs immediate attention. Because the fact is, if I pulled him up on every single messy but harmless thing he did in exploring his world… I would be insane. And we’d probably both be miserable. A Tupperware cupboard is a world of fun that no child should have to miss out on.

Using the Blind Eye over the last few years has afforded me an interesting revelation; it isn’t actually true that teachers, parents and general old persons are easy to fleece because they’re unobservant fuddy-duddies on the brink of dementia. We just can’t be stuffed. We’re tired, we’ve seen worse, and quite frankly, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. I mean, what’s easier – blowing the whistle on every insignificant trespass of justice you see, or occasionally just going ‘meh’?

Survival with your sanity intact in the world of kids is all about choosing your battles, and the Blind Eye helps you do that with stealth and discretion – whilst giving your lil’ precious the fun of thinking he can occasionally outsmart you…

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