To think it's impossible to 'child-proof' your house

[NorthernRosie]

I have a baby of 6 months and everything keeps telling me that I need to go round and childproof the house - but how on earth can you childproof a whole house?

I have a small house and don't have enough storage and cupboards to put EVERYTHING that could be slightly dangerous on a top shelf.

Do I need to replace our pull down shutter blinds in living room? And what about our expensive floor standing speakers - do I have to replace those? And get our DVD / stereo boxed in? I can't afford all that on maternity leave!!!

What did you do?

I just moved/secured anything that could topple, put a fire guard over the fire and baby gates to the stairs and kitchen. I also used socket covers when DS started showing an interest but they are controversial at the moment.

You don't have to spend a fortune, one reason we didn't was that as quickly as DS showed an interest in something he found something else to replace it. We were both at work full time and DS would be bathed and put to bed as soon as we got home. Weekends were always busy but there was usually 2 of us supervising and playing with him constantly so it wasn't like he got chance to hurt himself.

Now we have DS2 our work patterns have changed and we have 2 children to watch which has made us a lot more vigilant. We've covered sharp corners and blocked access to radiators when the heating is on. All hot drinks stay on one particular unit which is tall and we've tethered draws and units to the walls that they stand against.

We didn't child proof at all, no locks, stair gate etc, we just taught out toddler not to do things and she doesn't.

"We didn't child proof at all, no locks, stair gate etc, we just taught out toddler not to do things and she doesn't."

Well, bully for you. Unfortunately not all toddlers are as well behaved as yours. From my experience girls seem to be less inquisitive than boys. My friend's daughter was like yours, but when she had twin boys she had a rude wake up call and had to child proof and stair gate everything in spite of them being told over and over and over again not to touch stuff.

Yes, I have a friend whose nearly 4yo doesn't touch anything.
When we go to their house my nearly 3yo opens cupboards, touches things, holds objects that it never occurred to my friend to hide or move out of the way because her child has never shown any interest in them.

You could (I do) try to teach my DS not to touch til you're blue in the face and it makes not a jot of difference.

As with basically every other thing, it's depends on their personalities!

Seek and destroy :o :o :o I've had two 'seek and destroy' toddlers and one toddler who never touched a thing. She ate all the things instead - fluff, salt, sand, Playdoh, more fluff.

Mostly it's about commonsense and supervision is your main form of baby proofing. However, supervision only goes so far. We all drop the ball sometimes, we all need to pee or answer the door or cook the dinner, and you cannot have eyes on your toddler 24/7. Baby proofing helps to prevent accidents and helps to slow your toddler down until you have eyes on them again, like how DS2 (23mo) can undo all the cupboard locks but I keep them on there because undoing them slows him down long enough for me to get to him.

You baby proof and then you teach alongside it. So put stairgates up to stop them climbing the stairs without you but alongside that teach them to go up and down safely when they're with you, so that if they ever do get onto the stairs without you there's a chance they won't fall down them. When all of mine were small I taught them to crawl up and then to come down backwards on their tummies.

Make sure anything hot is out of reach, cords aren't dangling, and anything small enough to go in their mouths is picked up out of reach - particularly coins and batteries. If you have houseplants either check they aren't harmful if ingested or move them out of reach.

I found it such a shock that my 'no' has absolutely no effect at all on my toddler. I could stop any primary school aged child in their tracks with just a gentle no, so it seemed particularly hard that it had no effect on my own toddler.

Those of us with selectively deaf children do still say no, they just don't listen. It makes life very wearing actually, constantly physically moving children away from stuff. That is the other reason I child proofed as much as possible, to save myself physical effort!

Thanks for all the tips

The speakers are with cones yes - and one has already suffered an injury from a friend's toddler! I don't really know what to do about them as the living room is very small so I can't move them. And we can't afford to replace them with little ones. But I can see they might be a toppling hazard, I guess I'll have to see how she goes in terms of interest. Husband is an absolute music fanatic so need some sort of solution!

What about TV's - how do you stop them pulling them over?

With the shutter blinds I was very surprised because they're new ones from IKEA and they don't seem to have child friendly features at all - they have long hanging cords. I didn't think about it when I merrily hung them only 8 months ago!

IKEA do cheap child proofing stuff, including some good childproof cupboard stoppers so you can open the cupboards, but they can't. Saves everything having to go up high and essential for the cupboards with bleach etc unless you are some smug mum with perfect children who simply didn't go where they were told not to.

Wanting to explore is human nature. Hell, I'm in my thirties and if you put me in a room now and told me that I absolutely should not open that cupboard and then left me alone, I'm fairly sure I'd open the cupboard!!

Oh, and unless you enjoy constantly picking things up then move DVDs and the like out of reach. We had a shelf of DVDs when DS1 was small. He would sweep them all onto the floor with his arm then open all of the boxes and fling the discs away. Every damn time I had my back turned it was DVD-mania. They very quickly got packed into a storage box out of his way.

Dh managed to pull out the cones using a straw, he googled it. This may be useful information for you.

With the TV we have a perspex cover so it can't be broken, and in the very annoying phase of toddlerhood we put a bit of furniture across the front so they couldn't easily get to it. Is your TV a flatscreen?

And for the TV, we secured it to the table it was standing on with straps like these

Babydan Anti Tip TV Strap https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00442IDEK/ref=cmswwrawdd8c3MwbRSDXTGV

I put stair gates up and moved chemicals in the kitchen out of reach. That's all I did as far as I remember.

Same. Taught DD how to come downstairs on her tummy at 8 months ish (early climber - she walked at 9 months). Attached shelving unit in living room to the wall and bought a fire guard (not used that yet and she's 5 now!). Left floor standing speakers where they were - they're fine. TV was already wall mounted.

You can't mirror babyproofing in the other places that you go so we took the view that it was better to teach her how to do things safely rather than stop her doing things.

What about TV's - how do you stop them pulling them over?

You can get straps to fasten them to the wall to prevent toppling. I got a company out and got mine wall mounted so it's completely out of their reach. It freed up some floorspace too and got wires out of the way because I got them put inside the wall.

eternal has a point about wanting to explore. I have one kitchen cupboard that isn't locked and I keep the plastic cups and boxes in it as well as a few pots of Playdoh, a box of crayons, and some paper. My own DC and the minded DC are welcome to pull this cupboard out as much as they like. It does distract them from touching other things in the kitchen to a certain extent. Doesn't work at all on DS2 though.

Yes Humphrey, I 'toddler proofed' in order to stop listening to myself banging on to DS about leaving it, don't touch, stop that.

If the only things he can reach are things I don't care about, I'm a whole lot less stressed

One last one.

If you're in the habit of locking the front/back door and leaving your keys hanging in the back of it then please consider getting a little hook instead. I used to leave my keys like that and when DS1 was about 18mo he unlocked the door and wandered out while I was in the loo. It was a quiet corner of the estate and he only went next door but it had the potential to be a terrible situation. Coming out of the loo to see the front door wide open and my baby gone was heart stopping. Ever since then I lock the door and my keys up on a hook so I know where they are if I need them but small children can't get to them without the aid of a chair.

With dd 14 months i find the best approach for non-dangerous items is to let her touch and get bored 20 seconds later, tell her no and move her away and she will never leave it alone again. Anything dangerous is kept in the kitchen and anything fragile is stored for now. DD is definitely one that is into it absolutely anything and no amount of no curre tly works

We wall mounted our tv last Monday following a few days of DD trying to pull herself up holding the stand. It had never moved but I was worried enough to do something about it. If you can wall mount your tv do so,if not anti tip straps work just as well.

Once your dc starts crawling then pulling themselves up then walking you'll need to do more. You should be ok now.

I know people who put foam corners on things but they fall off. You just need to watch them. Stair gates are great. We have one at top of stairs, most people have one at bottom but we can't as it's too wide at bottom. We have one on lounge door instead. We also have on on ds2's bedroom door just I case we need to trap him upstairs, we don't use it as much as we did for ds1.

We use these clips to keep double doors shut in the kitchen. Learned the hard way to move chemicals out if the way to higher shelves when ds1 tried to chew on a fairy washing powder tablet (in a foil wrap, it was ok).

We blocked off the fireplace with cardboard the first time round and a big play set of ds1 the second. We never boxed off tv but ds1 did break that by smacking the screen with a toy, got new one on insurance. We were watching him but he was too fast and just hurled a chunk of plastic at it!!

So yeah just do what you can, get some stair gates. You'll soon learn what needs to be child proofed and react either with more watching them or more gadgets. It will depend in your child.

I know plenty of people who didn't have to child proof much as they had obedient incurious or compliant children, then they got a shock with dc2 who got into everything!

I took the plugs off the sink and bath too. It's easy to unhook the chains and I put them on top of the bathroom cabinet. Stopped them flooding the bathroom.

You can't baby proof a whole house and even if you could how would your baby learn or react to situations outside your home. It needs to be a balance of removing some hazards and teaching your child how to be safe. What you do will depend on your house. It can be hard work to start off with but it paid dividends as he got older and we visited others.
We didn't have stair gates because we have wide stairs and a child that would climb them anyway. He learnt how to climb the stairs quite quickly and is now 7 and has never fallen down stairs.
I do (still) secure blind cords and make sure shelves / cupboards aren't able to be pulled over (you can screw them to the wall - found this was more of a problem as he got older) and we had a lock on the cupboard with the cleaning products in, but we never moved the floor height wine rack just taught him not to touch it. I'm aware when I was cooking and he was crawling age he was banned from the kitchen unless secured in a high chair or bouncer.
I know it's harder with some kids (I have nieces and nephews that apparently are 'untrainable') but I find if you are firm and consistant most kids do get it eventually.

We are child proofing as we go along. We live in an open plan flat with no storage so it isn't easy!

We've had to rearrange the whole living room as we have a climber, and he was using the sofa to climb on to the window sill. I'd never have thought about that until he started doing it. As you get to know them you can predict what will be tempting.

Obviously I teach DS not to touch some things, but it's much easier to move things out the way as you go along; it's not much fun telling a toddler who doesn't really understand "no" all day long.

DS1 was the sort of baby and toddler who learned 'no', was pretty careful, so child proofing consisted of putting a stairgate on the stairs and across the kitchen door, as well as child locks on any dangerous cupboards - no kids in the kitchen. All bookcases/TVs etc secured to the wall, but a lot of that was overkill for DS1. He was just easy in that respect.

My nephew is a destroyer. He is an Exocet missile in toddler form, despite the fact that my brother and his wife are frankly better and more diligent parents than we are. Their solution for speakers etc was to invest in a decent, flexible playpen and put the stuff they cared about but couldn't it out of reach inside the playpen/behind the fence (they got one of those playpen a that opens out and can be secured to the wall at either end). So far, it's working (DN is nearly 3).

Stairgates and locks on cleaning cupboards are a must IMO. We've put fragile stuff out of reach, and made sure cables are well out of reach. Made sure house plants are out of reach or at least not poisonous.

Make sure anything with button batteries is well out of reach, they are potentially leathal if swallowed.

Telling her no has little effect, but I persist. She'll get it one day. I hope.

You can't baby proof completely unless you wrap everything in bubble wrap. I keep on finding DD (15 months) trying to use her ride on toy as a step to climb over the baby gate

We've had to rearrange the whole living room as we have a climber, and he was using the sofa to climb on to the window sill. I'd never have thought about that until he started doing it. As you get to know them you can predict what will be tempting.

I just put DD in grippy socks when she did that!

Hazards that are potentially lethal (bleach, kitchen knives, medicine, heavy furniture, batteries, etc) must be child proof.

In particular, please please please attach chests of drawers to the wall. Children like to pull the drawers out to make "steps" but then they over balance. Children have been killed under toppled furniture: my own pfb only wasn't killed when he pulled this trick because the c.o.d. fell on to another piece of furniture, giving him a cave underneath.

Cupboard locks on the crucial cupboards for household chemicals or precious china, but leave them a pan/tupperware cupboard that they're allowed to empty.