How do you deal with toddlers and radiators?

[MediumOrchid]

Now it's getting colder we will have to turn our heating on soon. But how do I stop dd (13 mo) getting hurt by the radiator? She is walking but still quite wobbly, and we have a radiator along our narrow hallway she's bound to grab onto as she goes past.

You tell them its hot, and not to touch?
They knock it once or twice, you repeat it might be hot, leave it alone, they get the message. Am I really mean?

If your that worried, turn the hall one down low so its not as hot. None of ours actually hurt, just make them think if they grab them.

They get hot but do they actually get so hot that they'd burn on contact?
I remember when ds was just learning to walk, he kept touching the cold radiator despite being told not to. Then he touched it when it was on, the heat shocked him and made him jump and cry but he was fine. He doesn't bother with them now.

put a towel over it, you only need a bit of protection against them actually garbing them and only then on non thermostated ones, most don't run that hot.

Our bathroom was does because of vagaries of our eccentric hot water system

Both mine learnt not to touch the radiators after a couple of times of touching them when very hot. She will be fine.

Thanks! I'll try turning that one down a bit. I'm sure it will be fine!

You tell her it's hot, she will touch it once or twice but it won't give her a burn, and then she will know what 'hot' means.

I agree with telling her it's hot, it may hurt her if she touches it, but it's not going to cause any skin damage, and she'll have learned that it's hot and to avoid it.

My MIL always put towels on her radiators when we visited and I always thought why? He's not going to learn if you hide all the hazards in life, he needs to learn to negotiate them. My radiators are turned up and he knows not to touch them.

I wouldn't leave the bleach out for him to try and realise it's bad, but I think with radiators it's a fair strategy :-)

Yeah we did a bit of play-acting of 'hot hot ouch ouch' to her to get the message across when she was little and signs for 'hot' and 'ouch' helped when she was not really talking. She already knew 'hot' because of food 'it's hot let Mummy blow it' etc. and she seemed to get it pretty quickly to be honest.