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Congratulations on your new child – a source of joy and delight for years to come! While builders and architects have begun to incorporate elder-friendly features into homes, few create fully child-safe houses. This is your project, proud parent. But it does not have to be painful or expensive. This guide will show you how.
Childproofing means temporarily altering parts of your house to keep curious children out of danger, all while preserving your own access to the house. This process is cleanly divided into two areas: things to buy and things to do.
The first category involves the purchase and installation of childproofing products. Electrical outlet covers are a classic example of this. The second category involves viewing your house with a critical eye and making temporary changes.
Before you begin, it helps to know what you are guarding against. The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified several ways our children can get hurt. Falls account for the majority of emergency room visits. While this mainly pertains to children falling down stairs, out of windows, or off high places within the house, furniture and high objects falling onto children is a frequent occurrence and should be guarded against.http://www.cdc.gov/safechild
The remainder of injuries result from electrical shocks and burns, water hazards, and accidental ingestion of common household cleaners and medicines.
At the same time, do not be alarmed by causes of injury reported in sensationalist news items. For example, gastrointestinal injuries resulting from children swallowing rare earth magnets were splashed across the headlines several years ago. Yet according to CDC, only 18 cases occurred from 2003 to 2006. Keep these statistics in perspective and realize that most injuries result from the obvious – stairs and furniture – rather than the exotic.http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5548a3.htm
Along with the stroller and crib, there are certain items that you must either purchase or borrow as a hand-me-down from a friend.
Installing electrical outlet covers, long a rite of passage for new parents, may not be necessary if your home was built after 2008. That is the year that the National Electrical Code was revised to require all new outlets to be of the tamper-resistant type. These can be identified by the initials "TR" imprinted on the face of the socket, between the two vertical slots. If you are handy and own your home, the best course of action is to replace outlets with TR-rated outlets.http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/causes/electrical/tamper-resistant-electrical-receptacles
An easier fix is to install outlet covers. Plastic outlet caps are the cheapest solution. But because they are difficult for parents to remove – and as a loose item, they can get lost – many parents are resistant to plugging them back in. A better solution is a spring-loaded outlet cover that replaces your existing cover.http://parent.guide/how-to-baby-proof-everything-electrical
Children love to climb. Where you see a mere bookcase, a toddler sees a ladder leading up to enticing delights.
Consider any heavy, freestanding object to be a tip hazard, including flat-screen and older cathode ray televisions (CRT), computer monitors, bookcases, and dressers. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), one person is injured every fifteen minutes due to a falling object, and a TV falling on a child delivers 2,098 pounds of force.http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Safety-Education/Safety-Education-Centers/Tipover-Information-Center
Adopt the mentality of a person living in an earthquake zone and assume that every tall, top-heavy, or high object will fall when your child disturbs it.
For stairs that are consistently used, an investment in a quality baby gate that parents can easily open and close is an investment in your sanity as much as it is in your child's safety.
Staircases should have gates both at the top and bottom. Top stairs should always have hardware-mounted gates, which attach firmly to walls and banisters either with screws or no-mar attachments (especially helpful if you are a renter).http://parent.guide/how-to-baby-proof-your-stairs
Window screens do not keep children safe. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that windows not meant for egress in the event of fire should be blocked from opening more than 4 inches. Operable window guards should be installed on second-story or higher windows that are intended to be opened.
One solution for double-hung windows (windows with two sashes, top and bottom) is to leave the bottom sash closed and locked in place, while opening the top sash only. This permits airflow while keeping baby safe.http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/107/5/1188.full
Dancing, glowing, and unpredictable, fire is like visual candy for young children. Children should be protected from falling into open fireplaces or from touching hot gas-fireplace glass.
Wood-burning fireplaces should be fitted with grates that attach to the wall.
Gas-burning fireplaces are permanently sealed behind glass, but the glass can still burn young hands. Supplementary protective overlays are found on all gas fireplaces manufactured after January 1, 2015. If your fireplace is older than this, retroactive protective overlays should be purchased and installed.http://onsafety.cpsc.gov/blog/2014/12/19/protect-young-children-from-burns-on-glass-fronts-of-gas-fireplaces-use-protective-barriers
When you have a young child, your view of the world suddenly changes. Because your once-peaceful home now appears to be riddled with landmines, it is easy to be caught up in the frenzy of buying into every babyproofing idea thrown your way.
But kids are resilient, and it is not necessary to soften every imaginable surface. To avoid turning your house into a giant padded bubble (and to save money), consider avoiding these items or purchasing them sparingly:
It is important to keep your child's safety in healthy perspective. Children are resilient, and serious injuries are rare. At the same time, their safety exponentially increases when you undertake intelligent and informed childproofing precautions around your home.
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