To wonder if people were telling me the truth when they said, 'Oh, we haven't baby-proofed, we've just trained them'

[MainlyMaynie]

Several people have said this to me. They claim they haven't bothered baby-proofing and have just left their houses the same way. Apparently they have just taught their children not to touch. Their houses look the same, full of giant glass vases etc. But can this possibly true? I am spending all day moving DS away from objects, saying 'not for DS' and giving him a toy. All I have taught him is that there is a very funny game of going for a forbidden object, giggling and waiting for Mummy to catch up. If he thinks I'm not catching him, he actually pauses, turns round to look at me while laughing and then races off again when he thinks I'm chasing fast enough. I am tempted to turn my house into an undecorated category a prison cell.

I have stair gate and protective plug guards, the rest I left the way it was, children need to learn that although they think life is a playground somethings are not for touching. We also have open fires in both our reception and living rooms, that are un-guarded, though when in use we never leave the toddler un-attended. It works for use, I think it may depend upon the child.

*us

Plannersareus, please read the link I posted just above and if you are in the UK remove your socket covers.

we baby proofed the very hard sharp edge of the coffee table, that was IT! we trained him from as soon as he got mobile not to go near the cooker etc and it worked.

The idea of not babyproofing at all is bordering on neglect and lazy and stupid.

but once a certain age is not a bad idea to 'train' them in an age appropriate I see nothing wrong with having a few cheap ornaments to teach them 'don't touch'.

Out of the parents that say this, just over a half will get away with it and their children will be ok.

A small percentage will be killed in accidents, some will be disabled or scarred for life, others just injured.

It's up to them i suppose. I know parents whose children (now adults) have been permanentely scarred and they have never gotten over the guilt, so personal choice, i suppose.

We had a stairgate at the top of our very steep staircase and a fireguard but we never babyproofed otherwise.

None of my children were biddable toddlers but they didn't rampage around the house touching things either. They might have pulled out all the, for instance, CDs but I'm quite relaxed about my children handling things. After all, it's their home too and things didn't seem to get broken.

My friends who put their stuff out of reach always seemed to have children who enjoyed the novelty of my home and wanted to handle everything. Most breakages or inappropriate scribbling was always someone elses sprog.

In my house, deliberate destruction makes Mummy Very Mad

Well I never knew that about socket covers. Thanks Mumsnetters!

I didn't babyproof with DD1 apart from making sure all blind cords were rolled up and hooked well out of reach, and medicines etc kept in a high cupboard. She is naturally careful and cautious and quick to respond to "no!".

DD2 may be a different story. We aren't in the UK so I have put on socket covers, and I might consider cupboard locks. But I will still say "no!" I think locks and things should be there as a just-in-case last measure, rather than thinking, well, it's baby-proofed, so she can touch it.

Yep, I did know that about socket covers. I do think it's time every baby equipment retailer stopped stocking them. It's so hard to persuade others that they are unsafe too when they are in every shop.

My friend's two lived in a house with NO bannisters and they do as they're told, they even go down the stairs back first (as a ladder).

My DS1 and twin DS2 and 3 all require total lockdown and cannot be left alone in a room all together. The critical mass of three seems to mean inhibition and, um, brains, get left behind. They are 5, 3 and 3 now, and they will climb up on my sideboard and jump off if left alone. Yesterday my DS1 climbed up my (two half flights of) stairs via the bannisters, and up over the landing bannisters. No amount of instruction, cajoling, or threatening will stop this. When my twins were 1.5 we moved house and I have a very scary picture of both of them climbing up the windows and trying to get their legs up and over the top half of the open windows. My heart skips beats regularly. It's even worse in other people's houses....

To clarify, 'yes' I had EVERYTHING 'babyproofed' - but it's not possible to completely Proof anything now. W had gates on thi bedroom doors until they could open the, themselves.

ZOMBIE thread....

YANBU to wonder about it, if you've never encountered a trainable child before. But they do exist. I think it's luck of the draw.

I've done a bit of both: baby gate on the kitchen and stairs, all poisons in the locked utility room. I only close these when I want to do something that means I can't watch DD properly and stop her doing something dangerous eg: have a shower. Fortunately, she is the kind of child who, when told 'no' will actually stop what she is doing, so when she started opening kitchen cupboards it was easy to stop her doing that, and she doesn't bother now.

However DD has also been allowed to do stuff like, fall off the edge of our decking (only 12 inches onto grass and we made sure she wasn't about to drop on her head or anything!) which has really helped in terms of her learning to take care around drops/stairs and stuff like that: she listens when she's told to be careful around something and obviously watches what she's doing after that. A couple of bruises and a bit of a shock have (so far) saved her from doing things like launching herself head-first off the landing and hoping I'll catch her...

I moved everything that was valuable or dangerous - I was knackered enough having toddlers around without having to spend my whole life saying no.

Now they are 13 and 10 (both boys) and I dont think they have ever touched anything they shouldn't when out and about or in other peoples houses just because I moved everything out of reach.

DS is 2. The only bit of babyproofing we've done is a stairgate at the top of the stairs.

We haven't really baby proofed, we don't have a stair gate on the stairs as they are an odd width and I'd rather not have to screw anything in as we want to move soon. No plug socket covers as they are more dangerous then a plain plug socket. But we have masses of toys so DS mainly play with those, he removes DVDs from the bottom shelves but then we allow that as he takes them out and puts them back, no harm done. He went through a stage of turning the sky box on and off so I would say no and move him away. The only thing I don't like is the blinds, he likes to play in them and without removing them I can't think of a way to keep him safe so I try to distract him. It depends on the house and the child to a large extent.

I think some people have houses are naturally fairly baby proof anyway. For instance, if you live in a house where the stairs aren't very steep and you can close the door on them if you want to leave the room, then you may not need a stair gate. We had very steep stairs in an open plan house. Also some babies (like some grown ups) are less curious about their surroundings/less mobile/more timid than others.

The idea that you can reliably train a curious baby not to do something dangerous that he/she is desperate to do is nuts. You might as well teach them the green cross code.

It depends on the child. Dd climbed to the top of the stairs at five months, I nearly died of fright when I found her, the stairgates went up that day. At that age they're not capable of understanding instruction, let alone danger. We've removed anything she can kill or harm herself with, everything else is kept where it's supposed to be while we teach her not to pull things out and make her put everything back.

Nope - had fridge locks coz the little buggers would get out of bed, very quietly and have egg fights and a lock on the bleach cupboard.

Didn't have fire guards (well we didn't have a fire!), tried a stair guard that came off and caused stitches in DS head, plug guards are a big no-no anyway. Other than that, what do you do?

At the crawling stage, children have a natural inbuilt fear of heights so they aren't going to throw themselves down the stairs anyway.

People buy into hysteria and Mothercare catalogues.

All I did was put a stairgate at the top of the stairs. I pretty much just let her explore the place, telling her no only made her do it more. The only exception being the cupboard under the sink with chemicals in it - that is locked. No major accidents to report.

I didn't baby proof jack with DD1; was not necessary. Never bothered with DD2. Boy did I learn quickly that my children were as different as different could be. Possibly explains why I took well over a year to lose the baby weight with DD1 but was skinny as a rake very quickly with early crawler DD2. I was a cat on a hot tin roof.

I baby proofed for my PFB but didn't bother with the other two...except for moving a couple of dangerous things out of reach.

We hadn't got anything that wouldn't have been improved by smashing with first 2.. Our lads got round all proofing.... Last 2 we were better off but they were girls and didn't do any damage at all. Sexist but true.

My theory is that anything that could give permanent damage is kept away....so lock on cupboard with cleaning fluid, medicine kept locked and out of reach, fireguard for woodburning stove, etc. But a fair number of bruises from interaction with coffee tables etc.

I imagine otherwise parents would tend to find that their toddler is unable to resist the temptation (no matter how well they know it's not allowed) of the pretty flames in the fire when it's just a little too late to prevent the facial scarring.