Child safety and other moral panics

One of the recurring themes in the strip, as I've said before,i that Lynn seems to think all the shouting about childproofing is somewhat overblown. We've read in one of Iris's last letters that she thought that child-proofing was an attempt to keep children from enjoying life, we've got bleach and detergent lying around loose for children to consume, we've got children allowed to play in the toilet so they can drown in their own urine, kiddie pools left unattended so they can die face down in five inches of water, gates left unsecured so they can wander out into traffic and have any number of bad things happen to them, and so on and so forth. Despite it all, the closest on of them has come to dying was when she had to kill off Farley. What makes the Patterson children immune to destruction? Their creator doesnm't really know how children's minds work. Since she knows enough not to drink bleach or play in traffic, she assumes small children know that. There's a strong case to be made that Lynn has a slight mental irregularity: she assumes everyone has her understanding of the world. This is why she has Elly scream at everyone: they're not behaving like they're supposed to. The dogs, for instance, are supposed to know what Elly wants them to do and refuse to cooperate out of sheer stubbornness.