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Child Safety Issue with Falcon Wing Doors

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I took delivery of a new model X a few weeks ago. My 4-year old is getting into a bad habit of touching the interior open/close button while loading / unloading her from the car. In one case, the door did not detect me and starting closing on me. In another case, the door almost slammed my daughter’s head but fortunately detected her just on time.

Child safety lock mode does NOT solve for this problem. That mode only prevents the button’s use after the doors are closed. While loading and unloading a child, the buttons function. And this is when she pushes them.

Does anyone know how to deactivate those buttons? Other solutions? Thank you in advance!
 
Many years ago, my brother got into the bad habit of trying to open the car door while it was moving. He once opened the door just as a car was passing, and the other car ripped the door off while dragging my brother into the street. Fortunately, Mom stopped the car before he got run over, but it was close. The solution? Mom used a belt on his lower anatomy to reinforce the rule that you don't open a car door while it's moving. He remembered that rule from then on.

It's sad, but too many parents are afraid to lay down the law in their own homes. Your four-year-old could be taught, and a hand to the bottom might go far to reinforce his memory. There are many things you can't do when other things are happening, like pulling wood out of the fireplace when the fire is lit or running behind the car as it's backing out of the driveway. Education is required from age zero. You don't need to deactivate the buttons if you deactivate the kid.
 
Thanks for the replies! Yes— we’ve done the serious talking to as others suggested (as if that didn’t occur to us 😂). And no—we don’t see belting our 4yo daughter as a workable solution. But it does sound like those buttons cannot be deactivated. I might try the cardboard solution.
 
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Reminds me of Apollo 13
 
A tricky situation indeed.
While a way to disable the buttons would be the nicest and easiest solution, somehow getting your daughter to voluntarily not perform a bad habit also sounds important.

Perhaps you can rehearse the scenario and when she inevitably goes for the button and the door starts to close, pretend to be hit by the door and yell in pain. Repeat as many times as necessary with increasing level of believably crying out in pain until hopefully your daughter breaks the habit.

Maybe giving a hard stare and a loud NO every time would leave enough of an impression on her to not touch the buttons again, while not frightening her too much.

A child usually learns pretty quickly to not touch a hot stove with or without a parent's intervention. And there's something to be said about the process of how a child learns what not to do.
 
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This seems odd, as our older X seems pretty sensitive to someone standing under the door. So it might be worth some more testing and/or a service check. Or even some comparisons with another owner.
I have had one of us push the button when we were under it. I think the beep and the motion is more scary, as you think it might hit you before it has a chance to stop. Also, quickly pressing any of those buttons will stop it as well.

On the flip side, we have a 3yo, and if it was a real problem, I might move the child seat into the middle spot for a while. Although I don't think you specified seat configuration. We have a 7 seater. Our 3yo likes to push the buttons, but we have managed to get to the point of not doing it unless mommy or daddy says it is ok. Although one of us is usually in the back with him at the time as well.
 
A tricky situation indeed.
While a way to disable the buttons would be the nicest and easiest solution, somehow getting your daughter to voluntarily not perform a bad habit also sounds important.

Perhaps you can rehearse the scenario and when she inevitably goes for the button and the door starts to close, pretend to be hit by the door and yell in pain. Repeat as many times as necessary with increasing level of believably crying out in pain until hopefully your daughter breaks the habit.

Maybe giving a hard stare and a loud NO every time would leave enough of an impression on her to not touch the buttons again, while not frightening her too much.

A child usually learns pretty quickly to not touch a hot stove with or without a parent's intervention. And there's something to be said about the process of how a child learns what not to do.
Agree with you, this requires tried and true parenting, not physically altering the car. I squirm at the notion from the earlier poster that hitting a child is necessary. Our 9-year old kid got into his fair share of trouble, but we have never had to hit him ever in his life. He learns through communication and respect. Show your kids respect, they will listen to you.

My child is considerably older but rehearsing steps with a car as complicated as the X is important. When we first got it, he thought he can open the door the minute the car stops. He learned quick that he needs to wait until I put the car in park before operating the button and making sure there is clearance outside. Even paying attention not to open the door when the garage door is actively opening or closing. The best solution for a 4 year old is to have strict rules to never touch that button, ever.
 
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Agree with you, this requires tried and true parenting, not physically altering the car. I squirm at the notion from the earlier poster that hitting a child is necessary. Our 9-year old kid got into his fair share of trouble, but we have never had to hit him ever in his life. He learns through communication and respect. Show your kids respect, they will listen to you.

My child is considerably older but rehearsing steps with a car as complicated as the X is important. When we first got it, he thought he can open the door the minute the car stops. He learned quick that he needs to wait until I put the car in park before operating the button and making sure there is clearance outside. Even paying attention not to open the door when the garage door is actively opening or closing. The best solution for a 4 year old is to have strict rules to never touch that button, ever.
I agree.

And while this is completely off topic, I feel like there's something important to be said about hitting a child other than just how bad it is.

Establishing true communication with a 4 year-old or even older child can be tremendously time-consuming and difficult, because it requires the child to trust and like the person in the first place. And on top of that, children tend to think less ahead of any action and its consequences, which means even if effective communication and understanding has taken place, it may still take a bunch of repetition and/or big enough consequences before the child can effectively control their own short-sighted and impulsive actions.

And because it takes so much time and energy to get a child to understand and voluntarily stop themselves from certain behaviors, many parents who don't have the time or energy, perhaps overwhelmed and tired from their jobs or other difficult things going on in their own life, often resort to the quick and lazy but powerful communication method of hitting the child, which can be quite effective but also detrimental to the child and the relationship.

The important part here I feel is that while the physical pain and fear of getting hit can be detrimental to a child by itself, the worst part of hitting a child, by many orders of magnitude, is actually that, over repeated exposure and compounded by other observations and experiences, the child can oftentimes intuitively sense that he/she doesn't rank very high in the parent's priorities in life. And it becomes a festering source of emotional pain that the child cannot fully understand or articulate until much later in life, if ever.

I believe this is the reason why some parents manage to have great relationships with their well-adjusted children despite having spanked them as much as they deemed necessary, while many other parents manage to derail their children's emotional development and ruin their relationship with the child apparently by having spanked them.

This is why we sometimes have perfectly decent and well adjusted adults today that believe spanking is not a bad thing despite the statistics and scientific research pointing to the fact that a child spanked is more likely to have issues into adulthood. It makes sense that a larger portion of parents engaging in physical punishment would be those who, for one reason or another, tend to expend less time/effort/care for their children, given the fact that physical punishment is the most efficient and direct form of inducing a large amount of fear and aversion in a child.

Some children who grow up with rich parents who provide every material and monetary support for the child still end up as unproductive members of society who despise their parents, while some children who grow up in abject poverty with a bed-ridden father and a minimum-wage working mother magically become tiny mature adults at a young age who love their parents and go on to lead successful and satisfying lives. The key ingredient here making the difference doesn't seem to be money spent or how the child was punished by the parent, but the child's innate perception of how far the parents were willing to go in order to care for them.

My suspicion is that engaging in physical punishment wouldn't be so detrimental if it wasn't a symptom of the parent not willing to expend enough time/effort/care for the child. Of course, it would be a much better and a higher level parenting to be able to achieve communication without having to resort to spanking. I just feel that people are missing the real reason of why spanking can be so bad for a child, which is that it can often be a direct way of telling the subconscious of the child that "I actually care more about doing whatever it takes to make you listen to me and/or relieving my frustration than I care about you."
 
Maybe some people forget that some of us have nonverbal kids who do not understand what’s dangerous yet. Speaking from experience as Ny twins started doing this. They r 3 and in the spectrum hence I’m here looking for solution
 
Jesus the replies in this thread…

“Why don’t you try just telling your 4 year old not to do that?”

“Maybe you should whip them with a belt!”

The people who think the first suggestion is a solution have never had children. The people who think the second suggestion is a solution should never have children.

I, too, have a 4 year old who’s now accidentally closed the door on someone on one occasion and - despite already being told not to do that again!! (Heavy sarcasm intended here) - closed it on someone’s open door next to the car on a different occasion.

Child locks exist for a reason. They exist because children often do things they shouldn’t - and YES even when you tell them not to! They - particularly 4 year olds whose brains are nowhere near as developed as even those of 7 year olds - do these things because their brains quite literally are not capable of predicting and processing the consequences of their actions.

To have a child lock system available to prevent *opening* the doors and yet not have the foresight to include prevention of *closing* the doors suggests the engineers may possibly be as mentally developed as the 4 year olds, or perhaps those in this thread suggesting that all a 4 year old needs to avoid doing something they shouldn’t is to be told not to do it.

It’s a clear design flaw, plain and simple.
 
Somewhere in all those (admittedly shocking) replies were the suggestions to cover the buttons or remove them. That's probably the best anyone can do in the short term.

IMHO a bunch of drama in this thread on TMC isn't going to get child safety overrides on the FWDs.

Bruce.
 
If it’s the 6 seater, you could try moving the seat to its furthest position back - may be just far enough away from the buttons. One other option is try a different car seat. We used to love our Nuna Rava but it’s bulky and when the Y was our primary people mover we got a diono when we had visitors since it’s much slimmer and subsequently lower which allows our 4yr old to now climb into it by herself in the X. Also, another idea to distract your 4yr old is to show them the rear screen. First thing our 4yr old does now is climb in and turns on YouTube to peppa pig then climbs into her car seat. We buckle her in and I close the falcon wing doors after I get into the driver side via the screen. Screen time seems like the lesser of the two evils compared to getting hit by the door. Good luck with your 4yr old.