Tool: “Is this causing a problem?”

Part 1 in a series on things I’ve gotten more relaxed about over time.

Yesterday at a family gathering, my toddler was pouring pebbles onto her own head. A great-aunt said, “Can somebody stop her?”

I asked, “Is it causing a problem?”

“No, but she’s getting dirt in her hair.”

We both agreed this was not actually a problem.

There are a lot of things from the past that once seemed mandatory and are now relaxed as people decided there was no real reason for them: men needing to wear ties, and women needing to wear pantyhose. Good riddance.

Some times when I’ve decided there is no real problem:

• My toddler prefers wearing her clothes backwards so she can do the zipper.
• Periodically there are pantry moths in our food. When you look up if there’s any health problem here, you read things like “Pantry moths don’t cause any health problems, but of course you have to throw your food out if there are moths in it.” But wait, why do you actually have to throw it away when it causes no concrete problem? If the food is only for me and I discover signs of moths, I no longer throw it away. If I’m cooking for other people, I don’t use food they would be upset by if they knew (even though there’s no discernible difference once the food is cooked).
• Some of the homework assignments my kids bring home from school don’t seem worth doing.

Some times when I’ve decided there is actually a problem worth avoiding:

• Things that risk food poisoning, like food left out too long or pancake batter with egg on the kitchen counter.
• Bedtime is worth enforcing for kids and myself, because mood and cognition are worse without enough sleep.
• Things that will bother or upset someone who has a stake in the matter (like a housemate’s preference about the cleanliness of the house, but not a stranger’s preference about the cleanliness of the house).
• Areas where my kids aren’t understanding a concept from school, and going over the homework with them will help them get it.

Possible problems with this approach:

• This might break some kind of folk wisdom / Chesterton’s fence that has a useful function you didn’t know about. E.g. as a child I hated having to change my sheets every week, and as a grownup I decided I would only change them as often as I felt like it. But unchanged sheets are maybe a risk factor for skin infections, enough that I would be more careful about this for someone with diabetes or other risk factors for skin infection (and I totally buy that changing pillowcases is helpful for acne). 
• Not having some preference utilitarianism in the mix. I want to respect people’s preferences (e.g. to not eat animal products) and not just outcomes (if they won’t notice if the piecrust isn’t vegan). If I think their preference isn’t viable to satisfy (like my child’s desire never to touch anything that has been touched by our cats), we should talk about that rather than me deceiving them.