AIBU to do no babyproofing whatsoever?

[MogwaiTheGremlin]

DS (8 months) has just started crawling and every single person has reacted by saying 'ooooh time to babyproof your house'. Maybe I'm thick but I have no idea how to babyproof a house - surely it's virtually impossible?
Ours is split level so we'd need about 5 stair gates, endless door/cupboard keep-shut thingys and god knows what else. Aside from all the hassle, i don't want to live in fort bloody knox! Plus I'm sure DS would find the one thing I hadn't 'proofed' to bump into/chew/destroy.
Our cleaning products are already stored in a cupboard well out of reach so I am planning to leave everything as it is and over time teach DS how to negotiate his way through our home. And in the meantime I'll supervise him at all times.
My NCT class looked at me as if i was the most neglectful mum ever when i admitted this. So am I being unreasonable or just incredibly naive?!

The only injury any of my chidren ever had was DS2 swinging from a stairgate at 18months, he ripped it out of the wall and it split his head open.

None of mine have ever put a fork or a finger in the socket, acquired a bottle of bleach to drink, jammed fingers in doors, thrown them selves down the stairs, smashed ornaments, fallen trough glass, climbed out of windows or any other tale of media woe you read about

Oh and DS1 pulled a chest of drawers on to himself when he was about two and a half. I was pg, having a nap; DH was watching him but thought he'd woken me up; he pulled out the drawers and used them as stairs.

The c.o.d. fell forwards; the tv slid off it and crashed down. The sole reason he is alive today is that the c.o.d. was near enough the bed that it didn't fall flat but made a triangular void that he was luckily in. The force of the tv falling would have shattered his skull.

We only hadn't attached it because we were about to move house.

We attached everything to the wall in our new house.

Sorry, my point is that a lot of "baby proofing" is nonsense, but some of it genuinely saves lives.

Unfortunately i think DS is the adventurous type as he's only been crawling for one day and he spent the afternoon emptying the kitchen cupboards whilst i looked on indulgently and took photos for DH!

So now I'm thinking maybe just one gate for his bedroom as the door doesn't close (old house, warped wood, none of the bloody doors shut properly)? In an emergency i could shut him in there but the rest of the time he'll have free rein.
And yey to the jumperoo being no good from 12 months ish as i hate the bloody thing!

Very little baby proofing here, house is 3 storey so would have meant lots of stair gates, we tried it but nobody ever bothered closing them and then my DF kept tripping over the bottom one when he left for work (v early so dark and I assume he was half asleep!) seemed safer to get rid in the end. Dd1 was never left long enough to get to and climb stairs (we are perhaps just lucky in the layout of the house meaning stairs are at opposit end of hall to other rooms).

Other than that we just make sure stuff that is actually dangerous, medication, sharps etc, is out if reach and hopefully have taught her to leave other less dangerous but undesirable stuff alone. If phone/door goes I take the girls with me unless they're in a safe place (jumperoo, highchair etc).

All that said, dd2 will be crawling soon and it may turn out we were just lucky that dd1 was so good, could be eating my words before long!

Our 15mo DS is a sticky-fingered nosey pants and can get in anywhere and everywhere! We have a babygate downstairs (stairs are open from living room) but not upstairs, he's never alone upstairs(I just leave him in his room if I need a quick pe, he barely realises I've left the room before I get back!).
Cilit bang etc in a non-accessible room; couple of childlocks; valuables out of reach. One kitchen cupboard is locked, the others contain tupperware/saucepans that he's welcome to bang around.
He LOVES sockets so they're plugged up. I'm afraid if we just left it up to 'no' that's all we'd be saying all fricking day and we say it a lit already!

(For the record, we have ceramic floors. DS can climb up and down stairs very well, but it's not worth the risk imho)

Horry how awful thank god he's ok

I agree with you Horry. None of mine have ever gone for the medicines or cleaning products or plugs or things that I see other toddlers do when they come round like putting all the toilet roll down the loo or flooding the bathroom.

But, and its a big but, they have still had close shaves with things that I hadnt considered before. Rolling off the sofa and dining room bench they have done a few times out of the blue so if we werent renting I probably would have had nice thick carpets as they spent a lot of time banging their heads on the hard floors.

So it is about the dc and also about your attitude, some of my friends let their dc maraude about whereas I am OCD and a bit helicoptery.

We did hardly anything.

No stair gates, granny taught baby to go down stairs under her own steam from an early age.

(The three stages of stair mastery are (1) going feet first on your stomach at crawling age, (2) walking down holding on railings at walking age and (3) standing at the top/bottom of the stairs and yelling for a parent to carry you, once at talking age. Once you can talk you no longer need to walk!)

Only child-proofing we did was to tie a couple of cupboard doors (under aquarium) together with rubber bands to make it difficult to get in, and cut one blind cord that was reachable from babies bed so she couldn't strangle herself with it.

She has never shown any interest in putting her fingers in electrical sockets or drinking bleach. All household chemicals are accessible to her under kitchen sink, and a bottle of bleach on the floor of each bathroom. I think she has a good instinct for what is edible, she does raid low level cupboards for food.

Having said that, she is never left alone for long and is warned when she looks like doing something dangerous. She has occasionally fallen off a bed/sofa or just slipped on laminate floor and fallen hard. No harm done.

I have 3 DC, did have stair gate, but no safety catches on cupboards or electric sockets. Moved cleaning stuff up high, and said no firmly when the baby/toddler approached cupboard containing the china!!

KitKat can you use gates within doorframes and still pull the door to? Really we should just get his bloody door rehung

We've got a travel stairgate, it's amazing. Awkward house so we couldn't have stairgates everywhere, so the portable one has been great.

They do get more trouble as they got older though I don't think you need to babyproof for a crawler/cruiser, but the faster and better they walk, the more chaos they are going to get into...

ok thank you, so maybe we'll be ok for the moment and then once he's walking we can reassess!

You should get the door rehung for fire safety - a properly shut door can give you an extra half hour to escape a house fire at night. Even a shitty MDF one.

It also very much depends on the child. Dd was never that interested in cupboards and drawers but we've had to get cupboard locks with ds as he would pull everything out and there's breakable stuff and knives etc.

I put a baby gate on the kitchen door and at the bottom of the stairs and that's it. So far age 10 & 6 they are fine .

I was seriously OTT with my child-proofing but having read a few of the posts even if you want to go minimal (to some extent kids do vary as to how much they test things to destruction/go exploring) I would suggest in addition to appropriate stairgates, fireguard for dangerous stone hearths as well, medicines and cleaning products out of reach, you make your life easier by banning plastic bags from your house (it only takes one to suffocate your child), tinsel, balloons, peanuts until kids are no longer putting things in their mouths to explore. Also review all small things as choke hazards and put out of the way until they start school. Many toys are choke hazards - knowing there are none in your living room makes it safer to nip to the loo.

i.e. only leave your child unsupervised with age appropriate toys.

I didn't babyproof. I taught my kids the word 'no'

SIL totally babyproofed her flat. It looks like an asylum.

She can't take her DDs anywhere. They destroy everything and injure themselves.

My DS hasn't put anything in his mouth to explore since he was a couple of months old. He's 2 and we have Lego and all sorts of small toys which have never ever been an issue. I don't think it's anything to do with us, he just isn't a kid that puts stuff in his mouth including fruit or vegetables

There is a big difference between safety babyproofing, and never teaching your kids that certain things just aren't to be touched. The latter tends to produce the kids that trash other people's houses!

I think you really do just have to keep an eye out for what might be a danger that particular week, kids change so quickly that what wasn't a risk one week might be a big one the next week. We had one of those little plastic kitchen stools, DD is still a long way from being able to climb on it and stand up and reach the counter so we thought it was fine. But while my back was turned for one second (isn't that always the way?!) putting something away she managed to try and get a knee on it, tipped it over, and badly cut herself on the leg. So that's now out of the room!