to ask about your child safety bumpf at home?

[cjt110]

Now DS is standing, aswell as crawling, we need to be looking at safety equipping the house. We have heavy fire doors which (so far) he hasnt realised can open. Our kitchen is mainly drawers with a recessed handle so he hasnt figured out how to o-pen them yet. The cupboard with all the cleaning products in has a recessed handle too but I am definitely not leaving that one to chance. We have another cupboard that actually has a handle but is full of casserole dishes etc under the oven. The oven is counter height. Most of our plug sockets are already covered by units etc.

What are the best safety devices you have found and what were the most pointless?

Never used anything other than a stairgate and that was more to keep them out of the kitchen but still able to see me.
Smoke/carbon dioxide detectors excluded of course, they are a must.

I am intrigued - how do you keep him in his room?

If your room is upstairs and his is down in a fairly open plan house I think you may have to be a bit more "lock-it-down" than most of us....

This is our floorplan. His room is off the living room and separated by a sliding wall.

as soon as he learns to be out of that room he will have full access to everything kitchen (chemicals, knives, hotplate, fridge, food)/livingroom (tv, DVD/CD slots/cupboards/shelves)?

Without you knowing since your room is upstairs with potentially 2 closed doors in between?

Sorry - I really don't know what I would do to childproof in this situation - it would scare the bedoodahs out of me.

Can you safety gate him.into his room that's our plan when ours comes out of his cot as he would have access to to much otherwise.

The roller blind style stair gates are wide and might work across the sodding door quite well, and my 5yo still can't open it or climb over it. They're expensive, but with your layout it might be worth it for peace of mind.

Ha. *sliding door

Probably not so much now but when slightly older we got a big cupboard for our bathroom so we could lock everything inside it with magnetic lock. Useful for medicines, toilet cleaning stuff (and stops your toothbrush getting flushed and your make up smeared over the bathroom)

Yy to high up cabinet or top kitchen cupboard for medical supplies

You can get a gate that goes right across the room. Friend has one as her room is open plan and she's blocked off the kitchen. Think it can double as play pen but she's bolted hers to the walls

Yes, lindam and babydan do flexible gates that can be a hexagonal play pen, or can attach to lock points on the wall

Slightly off topic but if your garage or shed is stuffed full of tools, scythes, chemicals etc then you need to consider locking doors.

Plants, too. Identify and remove or mitigate risk.

Bolted virtually all furniture to the wall
Made all tv screens un-tippable
Outlet covers bolted on where one had to rotate disc to plug in items
Fire/smoke/carbon monoxide detectors
Kitchen cabinet latches
Toilet latches
Stair gates
Grippy stickers inside tub
Eyes in the back of our heads, and crossed fingers and toes for luck

Wow, this makes us sound so neurotic!

A baby dan playpen will cover big gaps - but they do learn to climb over...
Mine are
Smoke and CO alarms -and an escape plan -whatever ages.
YY to tethering everything - chest of drawers might seem stable but if they pull out a few drawers they are anything but.
And blind cords. But also be careful with anything hanging up with something they can get their head in - so bags with handles, belts on coats/dressing gowns, looped long scarves, etc. And teach them never to put anything round their neck.

And locked upstairs windows -with the key taped at top so you can get out in a fire.
Safety glass - or safety film on glass doors etc if you have any that aren't 100% sure is safety glass (usually older glass). When I was a child our neighbours 18 month old nephew died - they were being taken out of their high chair and the whole thing tipped backwards and the child's head went through a glass door and it severed an artery (We had a similar glass door in our 1960s bungalow - my dad replaced the glass with the stuff with wire in -not pretty but safe)
Stair gates - better to teach them feet (not head) first and to go down on their bottoms/tum - although I had a big one that meant they couldn't get into the bathroom or get to the stairs and one on the kitchen door (main worry was tripping over a DC when I was eg taking a pan of boiling water to drain in the sink etc). But don't put one right at the top of the stairs - they can learn to climb over them (both mine did - a surprise - and before they were 2) and then you have just added another 2-3ft onto to the distance they could fall.
Never assume they will be safe because you have made it safe ...so you have to keep teaching and telling them.
So teach them never to touch anything above their heads on worktops etc - it could be a knife on a board or something hot (know someone whose 6yo pulled a hot (but thankfully cool enough not to serious burn) pan of soup over themselves) - with DD1 (difficult and stubborn) I put a plastic cup of cold water on the worktop so she got wet and got the message.
I also told mine that if they ever found anything that they thought was a sweet to show me - if it was a sweet they could eat it - if it wasn't I would find/buy them a sweet instead.
But you can never be 100% safe and you can only do the best you can - they can always surprise you/you forget.
So DP put a mug of soup on a coffee table, he'd left his bread in the kitchen - within seconds DD1 (18 months) had tipped it down her front (thankfully I saw it happen and it was so thick I had her babygrow off before it burned her).
Caught toddler DD1 just about to eat an unknown berry off a plant on the path as we walked past (I got rid of plant the next day - I had already made the garden child safe) .
DD1 at 7 (when I thought she knew better) helped herself to calpol jealous that her baby sister got it - apparently she had actually measured out the right dose. But I found the new bottle almost empty -she had spilt it getting the lid off- so I thought she'd had 3/4 of a bottle and she didn't admit taking any at first
And the final and most scary one - DD1's bedroom windows were locked. Our bedroom windows weren't but they were too high up for her to get to. Except we were decorating and had moved a small sofa under them. She was playing in her room, I had an armful of washing to take downstairs and I noticed they were wide open (had told DP not to do it -he'd forgotten). I thought I'll drop this downstairs and close them when I get back - so a minute later I came back up to find DD1 (2) leaning out over a 3 storey drop (house on a slope)...absolutely heart stopping. Didn't scream in case she was startled, I leant across the width of the sofa and grabbed her tshirt but could get a full hold of her cos of the sofa. Eventually managed to throw us both sideways onto the bed (where I had sobbing hysterics) - ALL upstairs windows were locked from then on.
Final thing I still tell them - if they do anything really stupid - something that they know I will be really cross about - tell me - I really won't be as angry as they think and I can help them.
(That comes from some children 6 and 9 who had been playing with a kettle, scalded the 6yo's arm and were so scared of how angry their mum would be didn't tell her - she found out a few hours later - the 6yo will be scarred for life and mum felt (understandably) terrible
and from a story in the news about a little boy who found and played with some birthday cake candles and set the dining room on fire - he went and hid under his bed. They all got out alive, but the house was gutted

Zillie, link please for the eyes in back of head

No hanging blind or curtain pulls
All strings taken out of hoods of hooded sweatshirts

TeamBacon, it involves a messy surgery-pretty sure the NHS doesn't cover it. Perhaps glasses with rear-view mirrors might suffice?

All pot handles turned towards back of stove to avoid up-ending by child

Unlucky - very brave and helpful post. Thank you. We live in a high rise and Im terrified of them learning to climb the rails. One just has no fear.

Scary stuff on here, and such sad accounts, too.

Excuse the ignorance, but why are socket covers dangerous?

I had stairgates top and bottom. I still have one at the bottom of my stairs now, even though my youngest is 13. I use it to keep my dogs from sneaking upstairs.

I did at times also have a gate across the kitchen door too, though it was the first one to go.

There were no flatscreen TVs when mine were little. All were boxy type ones, and relatively stable. I understand the safety problems with flatscreens though. Ours is rigidly fitted to a bespoke TV cabinet, and is very stable. Others may need to be bracketed to the wall, or completely wall mounted.

I didn't have much else.

Thanks team -that must be terrifying...especially with a curious, impulsive child - can you cover the front of the railings with perspex so they have nothing to get a foot on and make it higher?

I just realised that was all DD1 (just diagnosed as a teen with ADHD).
DD2 I guess we had learned a lot (worse thing she ever did with suck on a salt cellar) but she has never been so impulsive..much more sensible and obedient. I've lost her once - in a supermarket....she's now 8.
I lost DD1 countless times - supermarkets were her favourite - the security guy in Tescos knew me but also parks and shopping centres and once at 3yo for 40 mins in a massive hotel ...and for 30 mins at 5yo when she 'ran away' with a friend on the way home from school ...
She has been a handful ...so far easier as a teen ...so far (no wonder I'm going grey )

I did always make sure that all large windows upstairs were kept shut, and locked where possible, though I would unlock the ones in our bedroom at night once we were in bed because I was paranoid that there should also be a fire escape if needed. In the kids' rooms they were kept permanently locked, with just the small fanlights open at the top for ventilation.

We have a 20 month old and a just 3 year old. We have two big flights of stairs - 12-13 steps - and one small one - 3 steps. We've never had any stairgates. I don't believe in them. Both DC were able to go up and down the stairs on their own before they could walk. Currently, the 20 month old walks down but crawls up. Having said that, the stairs are not steep, they are carpeted, and we don't have anything at the bottom of them. They do need supervision for 4-6 weeks when the start crawling but aren't used of the stairs, but honestly the stairgates are so much palaver. I was very against them because my parents raised us in a similar house with even more stairs and we never had them and managed fine.

We don't have any blindcords or anything like that.

We have also had bookcases, shelves, etc. attached to the wall very solidly. There are a couple of bookcases that we haven't had attached - those with cabinet unit underneath and shelving unit on top IYSWIM. It wouldn't be possible to pull those over. To be honest - it's the smaller units you need to worry about - even the lower ones.

All our cleaning stuff is kept on shelves out of reach of the children.

Having read an earlier post I'm a bit worried at the possibility that one of the DC could pull our 32 inch LCD TV on top of them.