dangerous things around the house

[bubbly1973]

hiya, i have been a lurker for a while now, but tonight i felt compelled to join up to do this post.

i have a ds aged 2years and 5mths. i thought we had made the house as child safe as you possibly can, like not having strings to the blinds dangling, putting safety plugs on sockets etc etc

but tonight something happened that made me a bit uneasy.

earlier on tonight, dh and ds were in the bedroom, me and dh have our dressing gowns hanging from the back door. i never thought for one minute that this would be dangerous for our ds until tonight.

he had the belt off dh's dressing gown and wrapped it around his neck and started turning around, the one end of the belt was still on the dressing gown..eek!

dh told him off, ds was upset but it both shook us up as to what could have been...

needless to say we are now going to take the belts off the gowns and hang them up seperatly.

then it got me thinking, what other things have happened that were near misses that i have learnt from..there was the time when in the summer he had his inflatable paddling pool in the garden

after using it i ALWAYS empty it out so that he cant accidently drown, however, i never thought of the rain (and lets face it, british summers arent always dry!)..so after a few days of rain, the pool got filled up with water, when it was sunny i let him out the garden to play

being paranoid i checked the garden to make sure there wasnt anything in there that would harm him, (i was checking for cat poo or glass etc) never thought of checking pool to see if it was empty of water because as far as i was concerned i always empty it after use. so you can imagine how relieved i was that i did check garden because pool was filled with enough water to have caused drowning by a toddler...well that shook me up at the thought of what could have easily happened.

so tonight i feel it my duty to point out these things as a mother and would be very grateful if any of you parents could post your experience of near misses that perhaps one of us hasnt thought of.

would be interesting to see what things i havent thought of

dont get me wrong, my house isnt 100% child proof, for eg, my dh's new lcd tv..ds KNOWS he cant touch it!! lol

sorry if this post is too long, hope you all know what i am on about, not too good at putting things down in words, thats why ive only ever been a lurker )

x

never thought of that bubbly - true though- it's horrid when you think of all the dangers in a house.
don't apologise for your posts- you should post whenever you want to.
let's hope that this has stopped you being a lurker and turned you into a regular poster

It does give you the shivers doesn't it to think about these dangers that we all have in our houses? I think water and very young children is one of the greatest dangers...

It's very very difficult to avoid all the hazards, I think the best bet is to always know what our little ones are up to... always have an eye on them which is totally exhausting of course!

Now DD1 is 2.6 yrs things had started to relax a little, but all of a sudden DD2 age 6 months has started reaching for things she couldn't before. I was in the kitchen the other day, and DD1 came running in saying "quick, quick". I could hear DD2 crying in the background. Went into the dining room, and she had managed to sit up for the first time on her own, and she had pulled the table runner which had a cup of coffee on it (thankfully it had gone cold). She was absolutely covered in coffee. It has made me re-evaluate things again rather speedily.

DH used to insist to me that there was no possible way that DS could electrocute himself with British power/electrical sockets. The way they're earthed, the flaps that have to lift to let an object in, the way the plugs are designed, blar-de-blar. So we certainly didn't need socket covers.

He almost convinced me, too, until one day I found DS (10 months) with a watering can in his hands, attempting to "water" the socket.

blimey, that was a close one zebra. my brother told me the same thing about how hard it actually is for a child to electricute themselves on a socket...but the way i always looked at it is that they wouldnt have safety plugs for no reason (apart from making a load of money [shocked])

to be honest i have been a bit relaxed about plug holes in the house, kind of thought that ds is old enough to know they are dangerous to be poked around in, but you just cant tell with kids can you

oh you can tell i was a lurker for a long time, i havent quite figured out how to do the smileys, when you actually type in the bracket

soooo does it worked if i do this..

shock
O
(shocked)

ah i get it, i typed [shockED] duh

...if that smiley dont work, its me blushing

Bless you!!

welcome bubbly1973

One thing that happened to a friend was that her DDs were upstairs and they had put the plug in the bath and were filling it up, had taken their clothes off and were going to have a bath.
BY THEMSELVES

They were about 5 and 2 years.

So we immediatley took the plugs off the chains and put them in a cupboard.

Well, I don't see this done here at all but it was common in the area I came from. During winter people used to start up the car and let it get warm inside the garage for a few minutes before going out. A person I known did this but his DDs (4&2 yrs old) went into the garage, the older got inside the car and moved something, the car slowly went back but the younger girl was not fast enough to get ou of the way and died. I know this is not common here but... just in case.

Another person I knew lost her 2 yrs old daughter while visiting a friend who had a pool, the pool had all protection to prevent toddlers from getting in but the older children were running around and left the door open. The girl didn't drown, she slid and hit the back of her head against the edge of the pool.