Consider Yourself Warned - A - Avoidance

So here's a cool thing about parenting: it gives you a form of super senses. The lamest possible form, but still.

You can see tiny dangerous objects on the floor from a distance of at least 20 feet.
You can hear a snack bag rustling softly from two rooms away.
You can feel that the room is 0.1 degrees too cold for your baby (may apply only to women).
You can smell... let's not get into what you'll be smelling.

So your baby is born, and you get all these special abilities.

And then spend the next 18 years pretending not to have them.

See, when parenting in a duo, it doesn't usually pay to be the first to notice the problem. This is one of the unwritten Rules of Parenting in play - whoever hears the screeching first is supposed to deal with it. It's like the grown-up version of "he who smelt it, dealt it." (Which is why you will often see otherwise perfectly intelligent and observant adults turn into silent lumps the minute they hear a voice saying "I'm thiiiiirsty.")

Even when you're alone with the terrifying creatures adorable children it's sometimes better to just develop selective hearing and see if by some miracle things resolve themselves without you rather than to go in and do all the scolding and mopping that would be necessary if you *knew* knew what they were up to.

This may sound like the most juvenile attempt at problem avoidance ever. It is, but it's also surprisingly effective. I could honestly classify this as a "tip" nearly as easily as a warning.

So my advice to my fellow parents, and parents-to-be: use your super-vision to get all the dangerous junk off the floor, then turn your senses to a higher purpose (like enjoying the subtle variances of shade along the back of your eyelids) and let the kids do their kid thing. If there's a real problem, it's unlikely you'll need super-senses to detect it.