What are you going about trees if you have a toddler?

[Trooperslane]

Breaking my normal rule about talking about the C word pre 1st December -

But I usually have a real tree plus all the decorations tat

I have a 16 month who's into everything.

What do you all do?

Ah Dilly cats/trees always an interesting combo.

This is a very reassuring thread! Ds 11 mo and into EVERYTHING so I was wondering how to approach the tree this year. Here's to hoping he finds it too prickly...

But a toddler will investigate a tree- and why not? We always get a Nordman fir, nice soft leaves, not prickly at all.

We've always had a tree. Make sure it's secure, or tilted a bit back towards a wall. Put anything you mind them grabbing up high. Put all the non-breakable stuff down low.

Tell them not to touch. They get it eventually.

You could also buy hexagonal baby gates/play pens. We had a BabyDan baby den (I think) from eBay, which would have gone around it we didn't, but it would have worked and sold again later for same price we had bought it.

I'll definitely have to put the tree chocs way up high, dd will snaffle them all in 10 seconds - she can smell/spot chocolate from miles away. she's her mothers daughter all right!

We bought a small tree and put it on a table behind an armchair, so DD would have had to try very hard to get to it.

We put put ours up inside a playpen because I have better things to do than play the toddler takes baubles off, you put them back on game.

Think this is one of those that really deep DS on how repetitive your child's play can be! If you've got one that plays for 20mins then gets bored I wouldn't worry about it but dd1 kept up the bauble game for weeks

We always had the same large, real decorated tree. We now have a 12 yr old and an 11 yr old so we must have had toddlers and a tree at some point. I don't remember it being a big problem - nothing to stand out against the general problems of having a 1 yr old and 2 yr old, or a 2 yr old and a 3 yr old.

We have never had a problem before, ds1 was 14 months and walking his second Christmas and never messed with the tree. Dd was 9 months and crawling, she had a look at the baubles a few times but wasn't that bothered. Ds2 is 8 months and close to walking, I don't think I will get lucky a second time and I have visions of him pulling it onto himself. I think I will just put anything special up high and keep removing him from the tree! I generally don't put presents under until chritsmas eve anyway because ds1 and dd would be forever touching and trying to guess.

Get lucky a third time I mean!