Nerf

A 9-year-old boy in Wales has lost an eye to a Nerf gun.  This is not the beginning of a joke.  This is the conclusion to a two-act tragedy.  It seems he lost sight in the eye because of an incident with a toy arrow when he was only 3; the second incident caused irreversible damage to the eye, forcing him to have it removed entirely or else risk losing sight in the second eye as well.

The mother, who is raising money through crowdfunding to get her son a more realistic prosthetic eye, says she doesn’t want people to think she is a bad mother.  I wonder why she would feel compelled to say that?

I am not trying to kick someone while she is down.  Really I’m not.  Kids will be kids, and with a few billion of them out there — half of them boys — even the most bizarre of accidents will eventually occur.  Maybe even twice.  But it is an opportunity for this parent of two to say yet again that extra steps of precaution are hardly ever a bad idea.

I’m not talking about toy safety, though; I’m talking about soul safety.

Will it cost your child his or her soul to engage in this or that activity?  It is impossible to say for certain,  But there are safeguards that can be easily put in place that will minimize the child’s opportunity for self-destruction.  Most of them, unfortunately, involve telling the child not to do what he or she has determined to do.  The child is acting foolishly.  But it’s not the child’s fault.  It’s the parent’s fault for not beating the foolishness out of him (Proverbs 22:15), either figuratively or literally. 

Frankly, I don’t care which method you use, parents.  But use something.  Your child will do far worse than putting his eye out if you don’t.