Have a baby on the way? Congrats! In addition to having a new bundle of joy to center your attention around, you will also be in charge of making sure this self-destructive bundle makes it to age 5 without too many accidents.
There are hundreds of articles online on how to babyproof your home, so we’ll use a different strategy instead, by focusing on preventing the main types of accidents that toddlers have.
- Prevent Falls
Babies aren’t very coordinated, and they naturally want to fall off anything and everything.
- First, if your home has any staircases, make sure that you have gates up so the baby can’t go up or down the stairs.
- Get rid of any objects that are low enough that the baby could climb up on them and then fall off, such as ottomans, storage boxes, etc.
- Finally, when the baby is on your bed, on the changing table, or any other raised surface, it’s a good practice to always keep one hand on him or her.
- Plug Electrical Outlets
This is an easy one. Toddlers love to stick things in outlets, so just buy some of outlet covers and install them. Yes, this does mean that you’ll have to do some extra work when you’re plugging anything in, but the peace of mind is worth it.
- Remove sharp objects and knick knacks from the child reach.
This includes anything that’s sharp, could present a choking hazard, or is fragile and could break easily.
- Bolt down the furniture.
When toddlers begin to climb, they can easily flip over big pieces of furniture. Anything that’s tall and skinny should be fastened to the wall to prevent it falling over if a toddler starts to climb it.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we hope it will get you thinking about how to effectively babyproof your home.
