Child Proofing Your Home

You can't wait until your little one starts to roll over. Then he does. You couldn't wait until your little one starts to crawl. Then he does. You couldn't wait until your little one starts to walk. Then he does. Now what. Now the real work begins. It is time to start child proofing your home. Where do you begin.

First look around your house. What will be in reach that your little one might get hurt. If your child is crawling you might want to get on the ground on the same level as your child and see what your child might be getting into. The first thing would be to buy outlet protectors. A child sees an open hole and right away will want to put their fingers in it. You can buy these at Babies R Us, Target, WalMart, etc.

The next thing to do would be to put safety locks on the cabinet doors. There are a lot of different ones you can pick from. I personally chose the ones that you have to drill into the cabinets. You need the magnets to open them from the outside. I am not sure I love this idea. If your cabinets are really thick the magnet has trouble sending the signal through and they won't work. They do make others though that you don't have to drill into the cabinets. They hook around the door handles and lock together. These work well on cabinets that are side by side but not so well on drawers either. I am still searching for the ones I can use on the drawers, especially since my son loves to open and close them. If you are have trouble locking the drawers I would suggest to move all sharp knives, forks, etc out of your child's reach. They always want they can't have.

Another important safety issues are the stairs. You will be surprised how quickly they are interested in those stairs. I kept saying don't worry about it. My son isn't even crawling yet. I didn't bother putting them up. Well wouldn't you know it not the very next day guess who was crawling right by the top of the stairs. You had to see me. It was like a movie. I was running but it seemed like in slow motion to grab him just before he went tumbling down those stairs. Luckily my eye is always on him and I got there with time to spare. But next time someone might not be that lucky. So here is what I suggest doing. Place a safety gate on the bottom of the stair so your child can't climb up and then fall back down the stairs. Place a safety gate at the top of the stairs so your child can't fall down the stairs. At night you should lock all gates because you never know when your child is going to climb out of the crib for the first and youdon't want to be awakened with a loud THUMP! My cat cries all night because they are closed. I should have bought the ones that have a little car opening. I have seen those being sold through Pet sore websites. I am pretty sure that Fosters and Smith sells this particular model. Check the manuals for directions to install because the original gate we bought for the bottom of the stairs wouldn't fit correctly. We ended up using it for the upstairs.

I am not much of a cook but everyone has this in their house, a stove. Whether you have gas or electric it doesn't matter. You still have knobs. my knobs from the stove are located inthe front so my little one can touch them. This is definitly not a good thing. Don't run out and buy a new stove with the knobs on top. Just go to the store and buy know protectors for the stove. These are great. You put these clear plastic thinks over the knobs and your little one is protected. When you need to use the stove you just open the plastic coverning. Very easy to install. But be careful. My neighbor's son already figured out how to open them so you still need to keep an eye on your child inthe kitchen.

One safety item I am not totally convinced on using is the toilet lid lock. I have tried and tried but it keeps popping off. I tried the Safety 1st brand and I ended up throwing them out. I just keep the doors shut to all of the bathrooms. I know it can be harmful if your little one drops something in the toilet so again just keep an eye out.

Keeping doors shut to rooms you don't want your child to explore. My husband is in the process of redoing my son's new room and he is a ton of tools and materials laying around. Needless to say this is a very dangerous room for my son to be wandering into right now. We installed a slide latch at the very top of the door jam so he can't open the door. What a wonderful idea. Now I don't have to worry about him getting hurt. We also installed this particular slide latch at the top of the basement door. Whenever I go down to do the laundry my husband can slilde the lock closed and my little one can't open the door. If your doors have the round handles you can buy handle protectors that make it difficult for you child toopen the door but you still can. We don't have round so we have to resort to installing the slide latches. We bought oil rubbed bronze latches to match the rest of our hardware. It actually looks like the house was built with them.

We don't have this issue but if have a coffee table in the middle of your living room you might want to invest in some rubber bumpers. These bumpers fit all the way around the wedge of the table. This will prevent your child from poking an eye out, especially if they are still in the crawling stage. My son is passed this stage but onto a new challenge, the kitchen island. We haven't figured out what we are going to do about this yet. He is just tall enough to bang his head on the corners of trhe island. All of the corner bumpers I have research are not getting good reviews. They say that they pop off. I guess I will have to keep on searching for the solution or just be careful until he grows another inch!

I hope these suggestions help you. Remeber you can't child proof your home enough to not watch your child. You must keep an eye on them at all times. It always amazes me how smart my 2 year old can be.