"Child-Proofing"

January 8, 2007

There is no such thing as "Child-Proofing" you can only make things "Child-Resistant".

When John Thomas started crawling we placed a bench from the kitchen table sideways to block the stairs. A short while later, he used the bench to pull himself up, and to bang the bench against the floor and banister. Eventually with this technique, he was able to move the bench away from the stairs.

We have since flipped the bench to upright, and it has worked pretty good so far. But two days ago he helped Mom push the bench back into place after the two of them came up the stairs. And yesterday, he was trying to push it out of the way to make it down the stairs to Daddy at the front door. As his skills continue to improve, we must improve our skills in "Child-Proofing". You might note in the "Pots" pictures from December 14th that all the pots had their lids on upside down. This was an attempt to thwart John Thomas from removing the lids. It didn't even work for two minutes.

Here are some of the steps we've taken so far:

1. Remove breakables from fireplace hearth.
2. Place bench sideways in front of stairs
3. Place bench upright in front of stairs.
4. Take toilet paper off of the roll and leave it on the counter.
5. Move bathroom garbage cans off of the floor and onto the counter.
6. Always put the lid down on the toilet.
7. Lock cupboard handles together with either official "Child-Proofing" devices or thick elastic.
8. Place a baby-gate before the stairs on the top-level of the house (near his bedroom).

And Dad didn't want to have to do any permanent damage to anything with our "Child-Proofing" measures (such as screwing in a device to a cupboard door) but it looks like John Thomas has not left us any other choice.

Having removed the items that were in his way, he is now able to stand in the cupboard and reach the breakables on the back shelf.

He is also able to reach about 4 inches onto the top of the kitchen table now too, so we'll need to either be less cluttered or just pile everything in the middle.