making the house safe

[wattle]

It won't be long until ds is mobile and I'm just thinking about making the house safe. Does anyone have any recommendations or things to watch out for (apart from the obvious - knives, hot water etc)

What about safety devices that worked well?

[xkwzit]

A few things that we've found useful off the top of my head:

Get covers for all your power points, in most houses they are low and crawling babies seem to be attracted to them like magnets.
We've fenced off the kitchen (to prevent access to chemicals mostly) and stairs (top and bottom)
We've got a child safe lock on the bathroom cupboard (again for medicines and cleaning chemicals) which is still working for the 3.5 yo.
Think about protecting your AV electronic goodies from the baby. I've not heard of injuries to babies (although its possible), mainly video and CD players suffering at thands of curious children.
WRT hot water set your hot water system to deliver a max temp of 50 deg (if its capable of higher temps - I think newer ones are limited) (this comes from a nurse friend of mine who has worked in a children's burn unit). Always turn off the hot water tap first and continue to run a bit of cold water into a bath right at the end of filling to make sure that tap spout(?) is cool to the touch for curious fingers.

There should be government type resources to help you out with this also. In Qld, there's KidSafe House, a mock up house to visit and see all the different safety devices that are out there (even for hazards you've never thought of).

Cheers

[mumof2girls]

One thing I did with my children was I got down to their level and crawled around the house so I could look at everything from their height and went from there to make the house safer.

[Chickadee]

While you're down on hands and knees, reach up and give a pull on every bit of furniture. If it's wobbly, unstable or could be pulled down it needs to be secured or moved out of bub's reach. This is important for when they get around to pulling themselves up. Shelf units should be screwed to the wall so they don't topple onto bub if they decide to climb up. TVs should be secured at the rear with a safety strap (usually comes with the tv).

[mumofethan]

My son has been mobile for a few mths now and these are the things that i have had problems with/made child safe...

-TV stuff: if possible try and put TV/DVD/VCR high out of bubs reach... unfortuantely this just isnt possible for me as I dont have the money to replace my lower cabinet, but my 10mth old little boy loves to "play" with all the buttons aka re-tuning the TV and turning on his DVD player... his best attempt was to feed my mobile phone to the VCR...

-Book shelving: aswell as making sure the thing is stable make sure that the shelves are attached and not just sitting on the pegs, i gave my shelf away as i have seen a kid push on of these at the wrong angle and ended up with a board in the face...

-pocket emptying: find a high up place that is the designated "dumping ground"... having a partner who works with cars he held alot of screws and alsorts in his pockets and would dump them on the coffee table as he is used to, right at the height of a curious bub... not a great thing!

-power points: my son has never bothered with these... couldnt care less!

-climbing: my son is a climber: i had to ensure that he could fall without hitting his head on anything... try and have the least amount of clutter in your lounge.

-cupboard: if ur cupboards are not lockable consider getting some locks for the lower ones, my ones have inbuilt locks (old style house) but my son loves to play in the plastics cupboard (the only one that doesnt latch!)

:D

hope this helps!