10 Child Safety Tips
Home Safety
March 4, 1998

As the saying goes, "Safety starts at home." Well, all right, but how? What should we do at home to make it a safer place for our kids? Below we list 10 Foolish Home Safety Ideas.

1. Talk to your kids about safety.

This naturally assumes that your children are old enough to understand the English language. If they are, read on.

By the time a toddler is three, he can be engaged in conversation. You can explain, for instance, the difference between a stranger and a friend. Try to keep the discussion brief, and focus on one issue at a time. You don't want to lecture, or overwhelm, or bore your child. As much as possible, explain the why as well as the what. Explain why it isn't a good idea to run out from between parked cars.

2. Tailor your talk to your toddler and your town.

Try to touch on subjects that your little one will encounter in daily life. You don't necessarily want to dwell on the finer points of Pygmy poison dart-gun safety unless you happen to be a Pygmy. If you live in a city, you'll want to cover subjects like crossing streets, subways, buses, strangers, playgrounds, and locking the door. If you're in the suburbs, you'll want to move to the city. Just kidding. If you're in the suburbs, you'll want to cover issues like lawnmowers, swimming pools, driveways, shopping malls, and playgrounds.

3. Don't scare your child to death.

No matter how intelligent and verbal a small child is, she's still a small child and can be afraid of monsters in the dark or any number of other real or imagined threats. If you see that your talk of stranger dangers is scaring her so much that she doesn't want to go out of the house, then take note and back off. Some reassurance will be in order. Your best allies in judging whether this is the case are your own senses, and your good sense: watch and listen to your child.

4. When you do talk to your child, end the discussion on a positive note.

It's better to say, "And remember, you can always talk to your mommy or me," than to finish with, "And remember, I'm only telling you this because strangers can actually steal you if you're not careful." You want not only to communicate about safety, but also to ensure that the process of communication itself is alive and well.

5. Make a list of "nevers." Explain why each of these is important.

Never run into the street.
Never play with fire.
Never touch the stove.
Never play with electrical appliances.
Never climb on windowsills or push against window screens.
Never enter a swimming pool area without an adult being present.

You can, for example, explain about fire in several ways. When your children want to help light the candle at dinnertime, you can first explain that that isn't allowed until you're at least, say, six years old. You can then explain about how heat rises: hold your hand a couple of feet above the flame, so that you just feel a little warmth. Explain how, as you move closer to the flame, it gets hotter and hotter. What you're trying to do here is to engender respect for this force of nature. Next time you have a fire in the fireplace, point out what it is that is burning: wood. Mention that "that's why we're so careful about striking matches in the house."

6. Be a role model.

Use your seatbelt at all times in the car. Children will observe and respect that -- if you don't, you'll have a much harder time persuading them that they should. Look both ways before crossing the street. Don't play with electrical appliances in the bathtub. You get the idea.

7. Keep power tools out of reach.

This means not simply that they should be unplugged (of course, even when you're working on something and just step away "for a minute"), but also completely out of reach. There's nothing quite like the allure of power tools. They make neat noises they help mommy or daddy create beautiful things or fix broken things. It's only natural that children will want to handle them. As a corollary to this rule, be sure that they're nowhere near while you're using tools, including the lawnmower.

8. You are the Toy Gatekeeper.

This means that you need to check on the toys that your children use, and to make sure they aren't playing with anything dangerous. Does the toy shoot something which could injure an eye? Does it have small pieces, and is your child putting those pieces in her mouth? What's the toy made of? If the toy came wrapped in plastic, have you disposed of the plastic wrap?

9. Be careful when you cook.

Cook on the back burner when possible and keep all pan and pot handles turned back from the front of the stove so as to minimize the chance that they'll get pulled down onto a child. When you chop food, make sure to put the knife in a place where it isn't going to fall on a child or be within her reach. Explain to your child that, especially with electric stoves, a hot burner can look just like a cold burner, so don't touch.

10. Keep poisonous hazards of all kinds out of reach.

Of course this includes things like bleach and detergent and other cleaning fluids. It also includes medicines, furniture polish, drain cleaners, hair spray, cosmetics, turpentine and paint thinners, mothballs (which are both poisonous and a choking hazard), mouse or rat poisons, poisonous plants (which include such favorites as begonias, azaleas, geraniums, and chrysanthemums), insecticides, and antifreeze.

--David Wolpe (TMF DBunk)