Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
One friend told me I should be childproofing while I was pregnant as I would not have time to do so later, and it was really important.
Other friends told us we should start childproofing before Teddy could roll over, so we would have it done by the time he was crawling.
I asked a number of friends what kind of childproofing they did, and what they thought was unnecessary and what they wish they had done sooner. Everyone seemed to think that putting things into the electrical outlets was very important, and many people had stories about how their children figured out how to prise these things out of the electrical outlets at a fairly young age. I could find only one instance of a person actually inserting something into an outlet and getting shocked as a result (an adult friend put scissors into an outlet as a young child). No particular harm resulted.
Several people told us we'd have to take books off the shelves. No one warned us to anchor the cases (and many lists of what to childproof do not mention the hazards of bookcases), or make sure something heavy stabilized the base of the cases. Yet this, to me, was an absolutely crucial safety precaution I worried about until it was finally done.
Several people told us we'd need to put soft corners on the coffee table. Our coffee table is a very old traveling trunk. Its corners are already rounded.
Many people told us we would need to put plastic latches into the cabinets to keep the child out from under the sink. We have instead gated off the kitchen, and we keep the bathroom doors closed unless we are in there with him. We have very few cleaning products in the house.
When we visited our house in Brookline, and later moved there, gating the kitchen was not an option. We got magnetic Tot-Loks and used those. We used some rubber bands on some of the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom in Seattle, and in New Hampshire.
Two of my friends I consider my models for parenting never child proofed anything. Anything. And they were remodeling their house more or less continuously while their two children were in diapers. There were rusty nails on the floor. Literally. Neither child injured themselves significantly until years later, when their son took a header off the dining room table, hitting a corner on the way down, which seems to occur even in childproofed households.
Based in part on the experience of my friends who did not childproof, and the odd inconsistencies of childproofing strategies I read about, heard about and saw in action, I decided that safety did not come from things, but rather from attentive, responsive, adults. Based on that, we decided not to childproof until we saw what Teddy was interested in. We would watch Teddy, and notice how he interacted with his environment and, when we saw him frequently tempted to do something that would have bad results (for him, for us, or for our stuff) we would then modify the environment so as to head off that effect. In the simplest form, that means we catch his hands before they pull off our glasses, and we keep his nails trimmed so he doesn't scratch himself or us or our guests. We also tell our guests to please stop him (without hitting, and without resorting to mean tones of voice) from hurting them or their stuff; we ask them also to tell us when they need assistance in this, and of course we keep a watchful eye out ourselves and supply burp rags and offer to pay for any damages.
Magda Gerber and the folks at RIE have an approach to childproofing that is at odds with mine. But then, the RIE folks do not like a number of the basic tenets of attachment parenting (notably including babywearing), either, so this is hardly surprising.
My husband and I know, from our own experience as children, and from seeing other children in action, that small items like tacks and coins, are really, really tempting to put in the mouth and swallow, and lots and lots of trouble when that happens. When Teddy started crawling around and picking things up, we started emptying our pockets (and leaving our bags) outside the gated area. I made a point of collecting coins into a closed container.
When we started leaving the gates open, and later, when we moved back to Brookline, we got in the habit of monitoring everything accessible to about crotch level (approximately Teddy's vertical reach) for Fluff (cigarette butts outdoors, pennies everywhere, etc.). We did this at home (obviously), but we also had to do this on outings to parks, the zoo, other people's homes. Whenever possible, we'd collect the Fluff pre-emptively, and throw it away (cigarette butts, litter) or move it to a higher surface (at home, friends' homes, some public spaces). I become quite irritated at people who leave tempting things (open purses, small electronic items, keys) available to toddler hands in spaces that are supposed to be safe play areas. If I went to all the bother to transport Teddy and I to the zoo, Children's Museum, etc., so he could do whatever occurred to him and I would not have to say no, and someone else interferes with that process, I get pissed off.
I tend to be opposed to cleaning products of the more toxic variety on personal health principles (if it makes me sick, I don't want it around). This has simplified some of our childproofing decisions. It's worth thinking about; do you really need to have all those chemicals around, or would it be easier to get rid of them than to keep them away from an inquisitive child?
Because we do not use many of the standard baby containers (cribs, playpens, walkers, high chairs), we do not have to worry about the hazards unique to these items. We bathe or shower with Teddy, so he cannot be left alone in a place he might drown.
When Teddy turned one, he got awfully squirmy at dinner, and had his hands in everything within reach. When we moved to Brookline, I ordered him a Stokke Kinderzeat, which put him at a comfortable height at the table, kept him from inadvertantly falling off his chair (three point harness), had a backrest at the right distance from the edge of the seat, and had a footrest. He was much happier, and I got to eat my dinner. It appears to be extremely stable, but we will be watching it carefully as he gets used to it and learns new things he can do to his chair.
As Teddy has gotten older, I've gotten slacker about moving away from the tub while he is in it. I cannot go too far, however, as that motivates him to try to climb out, which he is still too small to do without slipping.
Both of us have taken a CPR course that included infant CPR, as has our child care, although all of our certifications have lapsed, most of them are still relatively recent.
Ignoring, for the moment, non-accidental injury (resulting from abuse by another adult or older child, for example) and SIDS, infants 6 months and younger suffer primarily from falls, and secondarily from eating something bad or being burned. Burns become more frequent as babies become toddlers. I do not have a curling iron. We do not have fireplaces in the apartment or house; I do not use the fireplace in the condo.
Teddy got hold of a hot pan lid while I was cooking breakfast one morning. Since then, he has given every indication of knowing what hot means, and of checking for hotness before touching something.
Falls are mostly a result of being dropped when infants are very young (less than 2 months old) and mostly a result of falling from furniture when they are slightly older (3 months - 1 year). Infants are also hurt in car accidents (just like everyone else), and when they are hit by something falling on them.
After Teddy was about a year old, I learned that shopping cart falls are quite common (about 24000 a year injuries resulting in a trip to the hospital in the U.S.), especially with toddlers age 3-5. We're starting to look for the carts with the ride-in toy in front. Teddy seems to like these a lot.
Choking is a serious problem for babies and toddlers; I consider this an excellent reason to continue intensive breastfeeding.
The worst choking incidents with Teddy have been with ice cubes. During the summer just before he turned one year old, he really loved playing with ice. Whenever I put some in my water glass, he wanted one for himself. Rather than deal with his grimy fingers and/or a meltdown (of Teddy), I paid rent by handing him a cube. I could also bribe my way through lunch while on an outing by handing him ice chips one at a time. My theory is that even if a kid chokes on ice, it's self-resolving -- ice melts (much like cheerios, which have a hole in them so the kid can keep breathing after choking on it). There were a couple of bad moments, notably when he was put into a stroller or car seat (both of which are partly reclined, and where he is strapped in and unable to move fully) while eating ice.
Drowning is a serious problem for toddlers and older children. There are no pools at any of the places we live. We are starting to take Teddy to a public swimming pool so he becomes familiar with water. This is a difficult tradeoff, as water is never truly safe when one is alone, and won't be even sort of safe for him for years, and learning to swim may embolden him. However, I love the water, and cannot imagine not sharing this with him, so this is yet another instance of supervised play only.
Teddy's first year has been/will be spent in a third floor flat in Seattle. We did not, therefore, have to protect him from falling down stairs. The windows in the living/dining area, where Teddy is most of the day, have only two, very high windows that open, and they don't open very far, so we did not have to put in any window guards. It's a modern building, so it has not only smoke detectors, but sprinklers in every room. It is far too recent construction for lead to be a hazard. Neither of us smoke. The heat and stove are electric, so we did not need to worry about a carbon monoxide detector. We already have cordless phones. The controls on the stove are at the back of the stove.
We had hoped to avoid buying any baby gates, but decided that since we store the recycling in the hallway before it goes down to the dumpsters, it was just too much of a temptation and too hard to keep Teddy out of it. It made me very nervous to see him playing with glass bottles, and I really did not like to see him ripping up newspapers and chewing on them. A gate into the kitchen and one into the hall reduced his free range to the living and dining areas.
Over time, the gates were left open more and more. We moved the recycling onto shelving.
The gates we bought have a foot pedal on either side, and a knee plate; they are genuinely hands free to open. They do not auto close, so there is no regular slamming to throw them out of alignment. They are installed with tension, rather than requiring drilling and screws, and so will not be an acceptable choice to protect stairs. Extensions can be bought for wide doorways and halls. Ours are not installed in a doorway, but the drywall seems stable enough if located reasonably close to internal framing.
We protected the stereo and two of the bookcases from Teddy by lining up a bunch of plastic bins and cedar chests to block the spaces between the sofa and chairs. We also boxed up the books stored on the bottom three shelves. I wanted to have something heavy on the bottom shelves to keep the cases stable. My husband also connected the tops of the cases to the walls with angle brackets, as this is earthquake territory. Toys are now stored on the next two shelves up.
He promptly found the chargers stored on a low shelf, which we moved. He found the cords for the blinds, which we then tied to raise them above his reach. He found the power cord on the pole lamp, which we removed to behind the chests. Since his father's favorite toy as a baby was an extension cord, his father found him one of his own to play with.
Teddy shares our bed at night, and slept in a baby hammock for some naps until he was about eleven months old and could get out of it on his own. We put the mattress of our bed on the floor when Teddy was around 5 months old, because he was rolling, and I was afraid of him falling off. With the mattress on the floor, he has indeed rolled out of bed, and crawled off the mattress, which sometimes makes him cry, but never seems to hurt him. We eventually mostly childproofed that room. A couple of nights, I have woken up to a baby crawling onto my head.
I haven't been able to read while nursing for a few months, as Teddy grabs and is distracted easily. He also reaches for remote controls, glasses and anything else nearby; I usually nurse him in the middle of the couch or the bed or on the floor away from things I would have to wrestle away from him.
We have had to keep everything paper away from him, since he chews and may be swallowing. We also make sure there are no accessible house plants or leaves from house plants on the floor. We've had to vacuum more frequently since he started crawling, and his pincer grip has become more reliable. We try not to wear shoes past the gate, to keep the outside dirt and grit to a minimum. We've removed readily accessible power cords.
We started locking the wine refrigerator.
Before Teddy was born, we Rebecca-proofed the house by putting soft corners on the hard corners: the kitchen bar counter, the corners of the footboard on the bed (this was before we put the mattress on the floor). The corner of the footboard is an interesting case of adult-proofing. We knew the corner was very, very sharp. My husband improvised with bubble wrap and tape (we'd just moved, so we had plenty of each). We later inherited corners from other parents whose children were older, and he installed two of these. But while they were plastic, they were still hard enough to bruise and tear skin when I ran into the corner one dady. If you choose to blunt sharp corners with commercial products, test them on yourself before you rely on them for your children.
Teddy eventually pulled on the table cloth; we removed it and used place mats instead, until those had to go, too. We were very happy to have been in the habit of using cloth napkins, as we had no fear of him shredding them and swallowing bits. We removed toilet paper from rolls in bathrooms he had access too; like some cats, he'll unroll the entire roll (and start eating the paper, or at least putting it in his mouth). While I don't much like toilet lid locks, we're thinking of getting some, because he's hit a point where he puts things (including his books) into the toilet.
The second bedroom in the apartment is where all the we-don't-want-to-childproof-it stuff goes; we kept that door closed, until we installed the gate on the other side of it.
Teddy is absolutely fascinated by the grill on the wall heater. He spends a lot of time touching it and looking at it. We turned the heat down, and it was spring anyway so rarely on. By the time we need to have the heat on again, we'll be in Brookline, with central air and registers which should not heat up quite as much. When we travel in places with wall heaters that become very hot, we will have to come up with a way to protect Teddy from burns.
Teddy did insert into the wall heater a store credit card (acccount cancelled) which I let him play with. Roland had to take the grill off to get it back out. We very carefully monitored the shapes of what he had thereafter.
Our diaper pail is dry; when we need to soak, we use the washing machine and generally close the lid. The diaper pail has a locking lid, as well. Teddy likes to move it around the apartment; we discourage this when the pail is full by keeping the bathroom door closed.
The house in Brookline has a basement (which is where the laundry is), and two floors. The basement stair has a door at the top, which we plan to put a lock on high up. We have discussed what kind of lock this should be, whether a bolt, or something involving a key. While the house is older than the apartment, it is too recent for lead to be an issue.
The stair between the ground floor and the next floor may need gates at top and bottom when we return to Brookline.
The gate we installed at the top was very difficult to use (Kiddy Guard). We're researching a different one for the bottom. We definitely need one at the bottom, as he persistently climbs the stairs.
Some, but not all, of the bookcases in Brookline are anchored already.
The SubZero in the condo is anchored. Tall, narrow appliances must be anchored to the wall; children have died swinging on the handle and tipping the appliance over onto themselves. While the condo is older than the house, it is too recent for lead to be an issue.
Zoomazium at Woodland Park Zoo, the toddler play space in Building Two at the Pacific Science Center, and Discovery Bay at the Seattle Children's Museum are all excellent places to let Teddy run. When they are crowded, there is almost always at least one adult who leaves something out where they shouldn't. Occasionally, staff even do foolish things, like leave the door to the cleaning closet open.
Friends' houses have been highly variable. One house (two and a half year old) has bookcases with books down to the floor. Their child never took books off the bookcase. Two other houses only require minimal editing (remote controls, pennies, candles, a small number of books, laptops and cords for electronics) to make them more or less Teddy-safe. However, one other house was a complete disaster: all manner of small items stored on the floor, on the coffee table or on shelving less than 18 inches off the floor. With new, high play-value toys, these environments are safe for about 15 minutes, and that's about it. (And those are the rooms that were rendered safe for a party.) One particularly wonderful house has a children's play structure in the living room.
Our Experiences with TeddyCopyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created April 9, 2006 Updated September 11, 2006