On the need for a padded room

Just about each day, someone in our house - one of our kids, specifically - hits his/her head, usually on the floor, a wall, or a piece of furniture. This is typical for little kids, I know, and it's amazing, actually, how quickly they usually recover. I know if it were my head getting smashed against the floor, I'd be hurting and miserable. The kids usually cry for about three minutes, although it seems longer, and then they're seemingly fine.

Having a 4 and 2 year-old means we're not out of the woods yet. Thus, the padded room idea. I don't think it would be difficult to create - we'd just need to clear the existing furniture out of a room, get some huge pads like the kind you find in gyms and bolt them into the wall. I think I could market this. How many parents of little kids would love to be able to not worry about their kids hurting each other, or getting hurt, by, for example, the corner of a wooden piece of furniture, for at least a little while? These padded rooms would have nothing in them, except, perhaps, Nerf balls and balloons. In other words, things that kids can't hurt themselves with.

When you're a parent of a preschooler and/or toddler, a lot of time is spent trying to help your children avert a disaster of some sort. Just today, my wife and I held onto our kids so they wouldn't fall out of a trailer, pulled by a tractor, at a local apple orchard. Then, when we went back to the orchard "store", we practically had to threaten our kids and coerce them to hold our hands so they wouldn't run out in front of cars in the parking lot. On the way home, we stop at a playground and pray our kids won't fall off a high platform with an open side. We get home, and they jump on the couch, then later on their beds. They also have taken an interest lately in playing on the stairs.

This is the way it is with young kids, I guess. Sometimes, I force myself to just let them be. I can't prevent every fall. The falls they have that seem terrible mostly end up uneventful. The minor ones leave lasting bruises. We're still trying to figure out when to step in and hold their hands and when to let them remain on their own.

Although we probably won't figure this out anytime soon, a padded room sure would help.