Keeping toddlers away from the tree

[TwinsandTrifle]

We have 20mth old DTwins. The age that they have zero understanding of being careful around a Christmas Tree, combined with being fabulously dexterous and mobile.

What do we do about the tree? A cage isn't an option. To me, it removes all the prettiness and presence of the tree.

DTwins will have all the baubles off every time my back is turned. Even if I ensure everything is hardy and non-smash plastic, they'll still yank them off and probably twiddle with the lights. Maybe even tug the whole thing over/along. (Prelit BH I think about 7ft if that makes any difference?)

What do you do to stop small children wrecking the tree? We have other DC, so we kind of need a tree, and with twins, it's not as simple as just keeping an eye, boy twin is like Houdini. There will be times when I'm in the vicinity but not watching like a hawk...and this is when they'll strike . Our house is pretty open plan too (bar the kitchen), and we usually have several trees, and I'm already limiting it to one.

Any suggestions very gratefully received.

All the above obviously comes with the caveat that actually, it's pot luck and if you have a child who is determined to climb the tree or shred the decorations, you do need a plan b!

Boy twin is very much in the plan b category

There's no way around it is there. I need to cage the bloody thing. I really dislike how that looks, but it's that or nothing, being realistic, isn't it.

When my grandsons were old enough to want to play with the free my DD and DDiL both posted photos of day 1 beautiful trees, and day 2 still beautiful but with no decorations on the first foot.

Yes ShowOfHands my first could be parented out of it but with my second it would mean not being able to even get lunch on the table so we pick our battles

Why not put it up and see? Try teaching him, give yourself a weekend and be fastidious and if he really can't be trusted, then cage him it.

He might surprise you.

I have just found the most lovely fence for my tree with lights and fake snow to go around mine also a toddler that i just know will try climb it

URBNLIVING 1x Christmas Tree Skirt Stand Rustic Wooden Snow Fence With 30 LED Lights www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076185F75/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_M38DTWWD2ZPX1255ZQ10?psc=1&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Just have a smaller tree this year that is less likely to topple over. Involve them in decorating it, use toddler safe decorations and skip the lights maybe?

I just decorated the top half of the tree when ds was a toddler. Sure it doesn't look as great, hilarious pictures and memories though and you've got plenty of years for it to look lovely when they're just a year or 2 older.

@Mummapenguin20

URBNLIVING 1x Christmas Tree Skirt Stand Rustic Wooden Snow Fence With 30 LED Lights ]]

This would be great, except it's 40cm tall. Boy twin will step over that and impale his nads

Electric fencing? You won't need much and it'll be far more subtle than heavy wooden playpen panels. Besides they'll only need to be zapped 2 or 3 times to learn to avoid getting too close, so you should be able to take it down by Christmas.

Option 1 - playpen barrier
Option 2 - smaller tree at the back of a table (ie. out of reach of toddlers)
Option 3 - felt and wooden ornaments only. No lights or chocolate.

I've never baby or childproofed our tree other than putting non-fragile ornaments on the bottom half of the tree and fragile ones higher up. When they're young enough to be a really big risk around that kind of thing, you hardly let them out of your sight anyway, so I didn't find it particularly stressful to keep an eye on them when the tree was up.

If it's really extra stress to keep an eye on them, I'd just put the tree up later in December so then it's only a couple of weeks of tree hazard instead of a whole month of it!

Option 4 - Felt and wooden items only at bottom half of tree. Glass baubles at the top. Very stable stand.
Option 5 - Decorate as normal. Supervise toddlers 24/7, saying, 'No. We don't touch the tree. Just look' at frequent intervals all through Adent to NYE.
Option 5- Decorate the tree on Christmas Eve and do the big reveal on Christmas morning, then distract them with gifts and wrapping paper. Take the tree down on Christmas night.

It’s one year. Just put a guard round it if it makes it safe for your children. I’m sure you’ll cope with a loss of ‘prettiness’

Also you seem quite obsessed with the difference between your boy and girl twin. The girl will be delicate and in awe of the tree whilst the boy will be crazy and decimate it. Poor kids

@Pickles89

Electric fencing? You won't need much and it'll be far more subtle than heavy wooden playpen panels. Besides they'll only need to be zapped 2 or 3 times to learn to avoid getting too close, so you should be able to take it down by Christmas.

You've not met boy twin. He'd grab it out of principle. Probably zap me on the way past for good measure. And his sister.

I've thought of another issue with the pens. Short of screwing them into the floor, what stops them just pulling the pen all over the place? We had a huge plastic play pen with suckers that attached to the floor. Too heavy go lift, but they could slide it around with ease.

@Flowersinthefireplace

Also you seem quite obsessed with the difference between your boy and girl twin. The girl will be delicate and in awe of the tree whilst the boy will be crazy and decimate it. Poor kids

Are you ok?

Quite astonishingly, my children are different. One will probably fiddle with the decorations. The other will try and scale it. Do you have a problem whether it's the boy or the girl that is the more destructive?

Poor kids? ODFOD

Honestly, this never occurred to me. I have three sons aged 12 to 4 and they never bothered with the tree. Lots of 'gentle hands' and picking them up to touch the less breakable decorations under supervision...I don't remember an issue. Other than stair gates I never baby proofed all all though. I think too much of it makes a prisoner of you...what do you do when you go out in public/to other people's houses? The art of distraction and re-direction plus learning the meaning of the word no are very important. Not meaning to sound preachy!

@TwinsandTrifle your other posts don’t do much to ameliorate the fact you’re a little obsessed with the ‘crazy manliness’ of your boy

@JudesBiggestFan

Honestly, this never occurred to me. I have three sons aged 12 to 4 and they never bothered with the tree. Lots of 'gentle hands' and picking them up to touch the less breakable decorations under supervision...I don't remember an issue. Other than stair gates I never baby proofed all all though. I think too much of it makes a prisoner of you...what do you do when you go out in public/to other people's houses? The art of distraction and re-direction plus learning the meaning of the word no are very important. Not meaning to sound preachy!

Same. Other than stairgates I babyproofed nothing for DS. He just didn't touch things if he was told not too. But there was only one "baby" at a time in that case, always with me nearby.

These two, are more interested in playing together, so the dynamic is completely different. They egg each other on, and are two toddlers simultaneously which requires eyes in the back of my head. So it's not the case of "just do what you did with the other child"....if only I could.

In other news, I laughed far too long at this...

Could you put the tree in a room the DT are never in unattended? We have a tree in the lounge, hallway and kitchen.

Alternatively don’t bother with an indoor tree this year but put lights on an outdoor tree.

@JudesBiggestFan

Honestly, this never occurred to me. I have three sons aged 12 to 4 and they never bothered with the tree. Lots of 'gentle hands' and picking them up to touch the less breakable decorations under supervision...I don't remember an issue. Other than stair gates I never baby proofed all all though. I think too much of it makes a prisoner of you...what do you do when you go out in public/to other people's houses? The art of distraction and re-direction plus learning the meaning of the word no are very important. Not meaning to sound preachy!

It is a bit preachy. I haven’t babyproofed any more than you have. I can’t be arsed to explain in detail the layout of my house but it means that the Christmas tree is in a room where the children are constantly supervised, and the kitchen is in the same area. But it also means you can’t close the room with the Christmas tree in it off from them. Most of the time that is fine, and as I said earlier, with my first child all the distraction and so on worked well. With my second, if I needed to be occupied for a few minutes with hot pans, then she was up in the tree. I couldn’t be right next to her at all times, doing the distracting and “gentle hands”, because at some point we needed to eat a hot meal. It wasn’t because I wasn’t putting the effort in, you will have to trust me that it wasn’t working and the most practical thing was to change the way that we set up the tree for a bit. Children are all different.

The huge difference in terms of being at other people’s houses or out in public is that I’m not having to go and cook or anything, so I can be right next to them all the time.

We use to cable tie the stand of ours to the top of one of those wooden IKEA slatted toy boxes. They couldn't reach it to pull all baubles off and couldn't knock it over onto themselves. Decorate top of box around base with presents.

I don't have twins but one year between mine. Worst year for us was the 18m/2 year one but it still wasn't as bad as I thought! Main tree was very strictly not to be touched then I put a load of scrappy baubles on a different tree that the kids helped to decorate. That was the one they regularly interfered with but they left the main tree alone pretty much. Maybe that's a solution. My sister has twins and for the same sort of timeframe she just decorated out of reach, it only is one year and we've both been able to decorate freely and fearlessly ever since!