22/10/2026
I LOVED listening to the crazy stories my parents told about the things they got up to as kids.
You know the ones, don’t you?! 😂
The dinner table stories that got a little more exaggerated every time they were told. The adventures, the near misses, the questionable decisions and the classic line at the end…
“And we survived!”
Every generation has a version of it.
And look, some of those childhood memories were GOLD.
But here’s the thing about survivorship bias.
We hear the hilarious stories from the people who survived. We don’t hear from the kids who weren’t so lucky.
And thank goodness we learnt from those tragedies.
Because without those lessons, we’d still be losing more children to preventable injuries and deaths from car crashes, backyard pool drownings and unsafe sleep environments.
Car seats, pool fences and safer sleep guidelines didn’t happen by accident. They came from lessons learnt, often the hard way.
It’s not that today’s parents are too protective. It’s that we know better, so we do better.
At PAEDS, we’re ALL for childhood adventures, calculated risks, climbing trees, scraped knees and coming home absolutely covered in mud.
We don’t want kids wrapped in cotton wool!
We just reckon we can keep the magic of childhood without bringing back the preventable tragedies.
Because “I survived” makes a great dinner table story. It doesn’t make great safety advice.
Now I want to hear yours!
What’s the most questionable thing you did as a kid that would absolutely HORRIFY parents today? 👇
