Debbie Santos crawled around her home on her hands and knees,
trying to get a toddler’s perspective of the world.
”
It was a real eye-opener,
”
she said.
”
There are all kinds of things hanging down, things to grab.
”
Debbie Santos crawled around her home on her hands and knees, trying to get a toddler’s perspective of the world.
“It was a real eye-opener,” she said. “There are all kinds of things hanging down, things to grab.”
Santos, a mother of three, recommends crawling on the floor to anyone who needs to childproof a home.
“My kids figured out how to open the front door lock, so I had to put a lock up higher where they couldn’t reach. I put recessed lighting in and took all the lamps off the night stands and side tables after one of my children pulled down a lamp,” said Santos, a Hollister resident. “The lamps were dangerous in a lot of ways. Cords were hanging down, the kids could touch the bulbs and burn themselves. If a lamp falls and the bulb breaks there are shards of glass, and when kids are learning to stand, they grab onto things like tall, stand-up lamps that can fall over easily. It was just better to take them out.”
About 2.5 million children are injured or killed by hazards in the home each year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. To help prevent your child from becoming part of this statistic, try these safety tips. Remember to follow all product instructions carefully.
– Use outlet covers and outlet plates to help prevent electrocution. Be sure the protectors cannot easily be removed by children and are large enough that children cannot choke on them.
“One of the first things we did was put childproof outlet covers over the electrical outlets,” said Karen Percival, a Hollister resident and mother of two. “Electrical outlets are just the right height. They’re eye-level when children are sitting on the floor, so they’re intriguing. They need to be covered.”
– Use a cordless phone to make it easier to continuously watch young children, especially when they’re in bathtubs, swimming pools or other potentially dangerous areas.
– Use safety latches and locks for cabinets and drawers in kitchens, bathrooms, and other areas to help prevent poisonings and other injuries. These latches and locks can help prevent children from gaining access to medicines and household cleaners, as well as knives and other sharp objects.
“Before you know it, your kids are at the height where they could try to open up a drawer in the kitchen, so you’ve got to make sure the drawers and cabinets are secure,” said Percival, who explained that the latches are only released after a button is pushed. “Children either aren’t strong enough or coordinated enough to push down and pull open the drawers.”
It’s also important to have a safety lock on the toilet seat, Percival said, because children are top-heavy. If a curious child happens to tip forward into a toilet, it would be almost impossible for them to get out.
– Use smoke detectors on every level of your home and near bedrooms to alert you to fires. These are essential safety devices for protection against fire deaths and injuries.
– Use safety gates to help prevent falls down stairs and to keep children away form dangerous areas. Safety gates can help keep children away from stairs, rooms that have hazards in them, or swimming pools.
Percival, who doesn’t have stairs in her home, uses a gate to prevent her children from going into rooms that have fragile items in them.
Santos has stairs, so she uses a gate to keep the children from going up the stairs during the day and to keep them from going down the stairs at night. She also had a special fence built around her pool to keep her children away from the water.
– Use antiscald devices for faucets and shower heads, and set your water heater temperature to 120 degrees to help prevent burns from hot water.
– Use doorknob covers and door locks to keep children from entering rooms and other dangerous areas, such as swimming pools.
“My laundry room heads out to the garage, which is not a safe place for children,” Percival said. “So, I have doorknob covers on that door.”
The bulky plastic covers require a person to push two buttons that grip the knob underneath, then turn. If the buttons aren’t pushed correctly, the cover just spins around the knob, making it impossible to open the door, Percival explained.
– Use window guards and safety netting to help prevent falls from windows, balconies, decks and landings. There should be no more than 4 inches between the bars of the window guard. Window screens are not effective for preventing children from falling out of windows.
– Use corner and edge bumpers to help prevent injuries from falls against sharp edges of furniture and fireplaces. These bumpers can be used with furniture and fireplace hearths to help soften falls against sharp or rough objects.
“I put a foam cover and fabric on the hearth in front of our fireplace, and I have foam protectors for sharp edges,” Percival said. Santos said she makes sure the key is out of the gas switch on her fireplace, and she has also put a grate in front of the glass cover of the fireplace to keep her children from touching it and burning themselves.
– Use a carbon monoxide (CO) detector outside bedrooms to help prevent CO poisoning.
– Cut window blind cords, and use safety tassels and inner-cord stops to help prevent children from strangling in blind cord loops.
“I cut all the blind cords and made sure there weren’t any loops because there are just freak things that happen,” Santos said. “Little kids like to put things over their heads and around their necks. They like to put on things as if they were little hats, so you can’t give them the opportunity.”
– Use door stops and door holders to help prevent injuries to fingers and hands.
The most important thing is teaching children what they can and can’t do and where they are allowed to go, said Irene Mason, a child-care provider for almost 40 years.
“Give children plenty of space where they’re allowed to play, and make sure they know what’s off limits,” said Mason, a Gilroy resident. “The children I watch get one chance, and then they go to the washroom for time out. I’m firm, and I tell them, ‘Yep, I’m mean because I make you mind and do what you’re supposed to do,’ but then my kids don’t give me problems.”
Both Percival and Santos said they made sure medicines and sharp objects were stored in locked cabinets or in high places. Dangerous chemicals and cleaning supplies are stored in locked cabinets in the garage.
Santos also had alarms put on all of the doors leading outside as a safety precaution. The alarms go off if her children somehow manage to gain access outside.
“It’s funny – generally people put alarms on their homes to keep people out, but I’m trying to keep people in,” she said.
Percival also placed stickers on the floor of the bathtub that help provide traction on the slippery surface.
These safety devices are available at hardware stores, baby equipment shops, supermarkets, drug stores, home and linen stores, as well as through mail-order catalogs.
“If you think, ‘Ooooh, I should probably move that,’ then yeah, you should,” Santos said. “When in doubt, move it or get rid of it.”
