Five Essential Steps to Create a Safe Home Environment For Young Children


 

An Important Mission

Have you created a safe living space for your children? Statistics indicate infants and youngsters under 4 years of age face the greatest risk of sustaining injuries from accidents at home. Some common household mishaps remain completely preventable. Follow these five steps to help protect young children in your care:

Step One: Conduct a Safety Review

First, to ensure you've developed the safest possible premises for children, conduct a complete personal inspection of your home and grounds. It makes sense to write down potential problems you detect during this review. Examine every location in your residence with a critical eye.

Try and look at your dwelling from the perspective of a very curious person just learning to crawl. Imagine you haven't developed good balance and coordination yet. Pretend you have no knowledge about safety issues. What types of hazards might you encounter?

Step Two: Correct Indoor Safety Issues

Accident statistics indicate falls pose a significant risk. You'll want to consider ways to prevent young children from tumbling down stairways or out of windows or balconies when they crawl through the home. Additionally, toddlers remain at grave risk from unsecured objects that might topple over on top of them, such as television sets, dresser drawers or heavy lamps. They sometimes become entangled in handing cords (e.g. drape cords), also. Consider investing in baby barriers, window guards, and other child safety devices.

During your review, remember young children don't know about the dangers posed by electricity, water, hot stove tops, and toxic substances. You'll want to install child-safety covers over exposed electrical outlets and prevent toddlers from entering kitchens and bathrooms unattended. Make sure you lock cupboards containing medicines, cleaning agents, insecticides and other hazardous chemical agents securely.

Step Three: Address Outdoor Safety Concerns

During your safety review, also inspect outdoor locations with a critical eye. Motor vehicle traffic poses a potential hazard. Also, when your youngster plays outdoors, will insects cause risks? Or certain plants. It’s always a good idea to invest in things like safe fire ant control measures or weed killer for poisonous plants?

You may wish to create an enclosed supervised child play area in one section of the yard. If your family maintains an outdoor pool, make sure you fence it to prevent youngsters from accidentally falling into the water. Even shallow wading pools pose a drowning hazard for toddlers.

Step Four: Prepare to Respond to Accidents

To prepare yourself to respond to home emergencies involving young children, it makes sense to take a child CPR course. The Red Cross and many hospitals offer classes in this subject for a nominal fee. Learning to perform this vital procedure could help you save your child's life if a serious accident occurs.

Additionally, you'll want to invest in a basic first aid kit. Keep medical emergency numbers (including a poison control hotline number) readily available in your cell phone or beside a landline. Locating this type of information quickly sometimes proves essential.

Step Five: Pay Attention to Young Children

One of the most important steps in creating a secure living environment for young children concerns supervision. By remaining attentive as your toddler explores the home, you'll have an opportunity to prevent some accidents. Supervising play with household pets enhance safety, for instance.

Additionally, carefully watching over your toddler enables you to teach your youngster about your home. You'll also enjoy a better opportunity to respond to potential hazards quickly. Your child will appreciate your interest!

Big Rewards

By taking a proactive approach to safety, you'll help protect young children from dangers. No one can prevent every potential accident. However, by ensuring you avoid serious hazardous situations and by preparing to address life-threatening conditions as effectively as possible, you'll create the safest possible environment for young children in your home.

 

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