Self Defenestration

The father brought little Mohamed a trinket tied to a lanyard.

Little Mohamed loved it, he kept it slung around his neck all the time, getting on his mother's nerves.

The mother got fed up and took it from him and hung it on a window handle, where he couldn’t reach at his natural height.

The mother woke up the next morning, opened the window (which swings outward) to air the house.

She then got busy in the kitchen.

Little Mohamed woke up; saw his trinket hanging from a lanyard by the handle of the open window. It looked so beautiful in the sunlight, swaying with the soft morning breeze.

Mohamed brought a chair, climbed, and leaned out of the window frame to retrieve his trinket.

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The above is not how this went down, but it's one of the many possible scenarios.

You may blame the architects, the landowners and the authorities but, eventually, it's your responsibility as a parent to take care of your child. Cars of various brands have different safety features, but ultimately it's your driving that makes a difference, and it's true in the case of a hosue or an apartment: it's the way you run your house-hold and educate your child or spouse about safety that makes the difference.

I'm not saying architects and authorities aren't responsible, we are. But we can not guarantee prevention (except in the case of fixed, un-openable windows.) The code says window sill should be 110 CM above finished ground level, and that window handles should be beyond children's reach. But that's just a theory. Children are very inventive and creative when it comes to bypassing problems. What I'm trying to say is, height alone won't prevent your child from jumping (accidentally or by a delusion). You need to make sure he or she understands the dangers. You need to make him NOT want to open the window or lean out of it.

My mom tells me that she once caught me when I was two and a half years old standing on mid-section of your balcony's railing (we lived on the fourth floor), arms spread to the side and shouting "Jonkaaaar!". Jonkar, like Iron Man and Grendizer, were all cartoon characters with the supernatural ability to fly.

One more thing that may have been missed in the controversy: 50% of children still die due to jumps from 4 and 5 floors height. In other words, once you go above the fifth floor, the odds are more or less the same, whether you're on the seventeenth or the seventieth floor.

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P.S.: The title refers to the act of defenestration, which apparently was a popular phenomenon in Europe centuries ago. Especially as an act of a political retribution (throwing a corrupt nobility or a feudal leader out of a window of a high palace, occasionally to be plucked and finished off by angry mobs surrounding the palace)........ I could think of a few acts of defenestration that I would like to see happening myself.