Other Danger Spots for Young Children

While the bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom are the site of many household accidents, you should also consider other dangerous areas of your home. Garages, yards, living rooms, and laundry rooms all present additional challenges. 

 

·        Stairs: Install a safety guard at the top of your staircase to prevent crawling or toddling children from tumbling down the stairs.

·        Fireplaces and Barbeque Grills: Teach children to stay away from a roaring fire and from the matches that make it and consider using a fireplace guard to prevent children from accidentally touching and/or opening a hot fireplace.

·        Furniture: Some children are strong enough to pull furniture onto themselves, so use furniture straps to secure your furniture. You can also protect children from the attacks of small furniture such as coffee tables by placing soft pads on sharp corners.

·        Iron: Do not, under any circumstance, leave a hot iron accessible and unsupervised.

·        Swimming Pool: Small children can even drown in kiddy pools, so make sure children have flotation devices and are supervised in any pool. If you have a gated swimming pool, make sure you lock the gate.

·        Plants: Some house plants are actually poisonous if you ingest them, so find out which plants are poisonous and don’t keep those in your home.

 

Walk around your yard and garage and look for other dangerous spots. Are there any places where children might likely trip? Are there snakes or spiders in the area? Does you child know not to play in or under the car? Are your pets kept separate from children? Childproofing might look slightly different in different areas and with different families, but the goal remains the same: to protect children from harm.