Recalls

Recalls.

I am so tired of hearing about RECALLS. It seems like every single day, I catch wind of yet another recall for this or that. Lead based paint on toys, Spinach, Over-the-counter medicines. Seriously, it is getting out of control.

At first glance, I find myself wondering as to how in the world the quality assurance personnel of these major named companies are allowing products to enter into mainstream consumer hands, if there are so many problems. My own career background, pre Baby DIVA and the pink hair of course, was a career based in quality assurance. Knowing the workings of a quality assurance process leaves me wanting to know more and more as to why this continues to be a recurrent problem in our world. But this problem also allows me speculate that the personnel who release these items into the custody of the general public, might in fact be doing their job correctly and efficiently. Could it possibly be that we have a giant out pouring of persons, moms, dads, loud mouths, who are crying wolf at any opportunity they can?

Let us look at the most current recall issued by Fisher Price, just this week. I have a particular interest in the recall that states "Children can fall on or against the pegs...resulting in injuries or lacerations." This is in reference to the Healthy Clean, Easy Care High chair. So, basically this product is being recalled because a child might fall down and get hurt because he or she bumps into it, in simple terms. Well if we put this behavior into practice on all products, we may as well go ahead and start a recall on all walls, floors, toes, empty air. I mean, my kid trips and falls into things all the time; and sometimes she gets an ouch. It happens. Do I like it? NO! But it happens. It is not the tile on my floor who is at fault if she falls and busts her lip. Shoot it is not even her fault. It is an accident. A simple oops that occurs in every day life. I don't call up the President of
Tile world demanding to be compensated immediately because my kid tripped.


I do not want to down play Recalls by any means. There is substantial evidence for many recalls that amounts to a necessity for a product to be recalled. However, I think many recalls (especially in recent months) are based on the fear of the company. The fear the company has of mouthy consumers who cry out as loud as possible for the slightest reasons, who have some how lost sight that occasionally growing up kids get injured, minor injuries of course is what I am talking about. A bump here, a bruise there and sometimes a cut here. But these are all part of the learning process. These little moments when a child walks too close to a sharp edge or is running in house and falls down and bumps his or her head; they are all learning opportunities for the child. Times that the parents then can step in and "Parent" the child. Remind the child that running in the house is not allowed because sometimes we fall down and get hurt. And then we help our child get up and move on. We don't teach him to destroy the floor that he fell on. We don't teach him to wallow in his bruise and place the blame of his fall on the person who designed and built that piece of flooring, god knows how long ago. No, we teach him to watch his step and gain the knowledge that this type of behavior and activity can sometimes cause a bad outcome.

Perhaps instead of utilizing so much effort, energy and time in trying to point blame at a large named company for little Johnny"s little scrape, we should instead "recall" ourselves as parents and learn how to parent and take care of our children again. We should grasp the concept that WE are the parents, not the product designers and marketing departments. We police our children and keep them safe, not the marketing department or factory rollout that makes the toys. We need to re-learn how to teach our children to learn from their mistakes and boo boo's in life. Teach our children that sometimes we do fall down, and when we do many times there is no one else to blame but ourselves. And when we fall, we get up and keep going.