My daughter (5 1/2 years old) knows about matches. She knows what they are and has been shown how they work. She understands that from a small match a large fire can grow. She knows that fire can harm her, her home, her family. She knows that matches have their uses but that they are not toys. She knows better than to play with matches. In our home there are matches within her reach, though not conveniently so. I feel that my daughter is “safe” around matches.
The other approach would have been to shield her from all exposure to matches. Send her into the other room when we put a fire in the fireplace or light the candles on a cake. We could turn off the television when anyone on TV lit a match or (God Forbid!) if they showed an actual act of arson. After all, we don’t want to be putting “Ideas” in her head. All matches in the house would be hidden, preferably out of reach and all talk of fire and matches would be taboo. This latter method, of course, would require us to keep our fingers crossed and hope that outside influences — children of parents less diligent than oursleves didn’t expose our daughter to matches. If that happened, she might be tempted to “Experiment”, and you know what that leads to.
As regards the matter of protecting my daughter from the dangers of matches, I, obviously, prefer the former method to the latter.
Having explained all about the use of matches and the consequences of doing so, I trust her to choose not to do so. Others, less informed playmates perhaps, might otherwise convince her that playing with matches is OK, that you can’t get burned the first time you play with matches or that it’s easy to put out fires once you start them and no one will ever know.
I think that my daughter is better prepared to handle a situation involving matches than is a child who is ignorant of matches and their effects. I think too that there are many (well-meaning) parents that would protest the proposed teaching of match-education in our schools. Ironically, they’re the ones that are playing with fire.