Childproofing your home is an on-going process as your little one grows from a crawling baby to a toddling toddler. There are often overlooked hazards in your home that can cause serious injury. In fact, household injuries are one of the top reasons children aged 3 and under are seen in the emergency department. So what can you do to help prevent your child from being injured in your home? We have some tips for you.
1. Go room by room to look for potential hazards to remedy. When you try to address the entire house at once, you could overlook crucial details that will keep your child safe.
2. Invest in safety locks, safety knobs, baby gates and outlet covers. At the most basic, you want to have a way to block rooms you don’t want your child playing in, like the kitchen. And you want to have safety locks on cabinets, safety knobs on doors and outlet covers in all electrical outlets.
3. Hide or buy covers for power strips. If you have powerstrips, try to hide them behind heavy furniture whenever possible. When not possible, you can buy a powerstrip cover to prevent your child from sticking things in the holes and risking electrocution.
4. Mount your TV to the wall. Falling TVs account for a number of childhood injuries. If you can, mount your TV up on the wall where your child can’t tip it over onto themselves.
5. Mount furniture to the wall. Look for easy to tip furniture and use brackets to mount it to the wall should your child climb on it. Things like bookshelves, TV stands and dressers are prime pieces of furniture to mount to the wall.
6. Invest in cordless window blinds to avoid strangulation hazards.
7. Keep cleaning supplies and toiletries in high cabinets with locks on them.
8. Install corner protectors on tables and sharp corners. Make sure any glass in your tables or furniture is tempered glass. Non-tempered glass shatters easily and can result in serious cuts. While we’re on the subject of glass, keep picture frames out of your child’s reach by displaying them up high on a mantle or hanging them on the wall. Even on carpeted floors, kids can break the glass in picture frames and cut themselves.
9. Keep the toilet lid closed at all times and use a baby gate to keep your child out of the bathroom when you aren’t able to accompany them. It only takes a few inches of water in a toilet or a bathtub to result in a drowning incident.
10. Install a faucet cover on the bathtub faucet to reduce the likelihood of burns and scalds from hot water or hot metal.
So much goes into childproofing your home properly. Going room by room and addressing every hazard in each room can help you catch all of the little details you want to address and ways you need to protect your child in the home. As a general rule, if your child could possibly choke on it, be choked with it, break it or be cut with it, you want to make sure you address the safety needs for that object from putting candles up high to investing in cordless blinds.
