Farm safety vs town safety

When we moved out to our farm, I never expected it to be harder to teach my kids how to be safe in town than it would be to teach them farm safety. You hear on the news about Farm accidents unfortunately fairly often. Our 2 1/2-year-old already knows to stay away from big equipment when it is running. She knows to let most animals have their distance, except for the chickens, of course.

When your driveway is 1/4 mile long, it's nearly impossible to teach your children to look both ways before crossing the street. Obviously, I know that we can teach them that when we do go to town for shopping or visiting friends, etc. but it's not often that we do that.

Our youngest is fascinated by other people when we are in public. He stares at them and tries to follow them. Whether it be to their car or to a different room, he wants to check it out and see where they are going.

We recently took them to the large playground at a lake in town. He was way more interested in watching what everyone else was doing than playing on the equipment or playing with his sister. Part of me feels that we are doing them a disservice by raising them out here with no exposure to neighbors or other people on a daily basis. However, I know in the long run, the freedom they have to run at home will be a bigger benefit to their creativity, perseverance, and leadership. Time to teach stranger danger, I guess.