Child Safety Tips – Ensuring Your Toddler Is Safe
It’s amazing how fearless toddlers can be. Their innocence about the world around them allows them to pick up objects that we know are best left alone. They will put all sorts of things in their mouths, poke at others, prod at some, and try to take equipment or toys apart while you, the adult, cringe in worry of what’s to come of this open curiosity. Fortunately, most of these worrying habits cause no harm to the toddler or none of us would have survived our parents’ worry past kindergarten!
But there are some practices that are dangerous, even fatal, for toddlers. Outdoors and indoors, toddlers need supervision to insure their safety. With their innocent sense of immortality, toddlers don’t know what’s safe and what will hurt them, so adults must stay vigilant on their behalf.
Inside your home, everybody knows about covering electric sockets, stoves, and keeping chemicals and medicines out of children’s reach. But your home is beset with dangers you probably haven’t thought about. You know how dogs like to drink out of toilets? So do toddlers! There must be something innately fascinating about toilet bowls that lures dogs and children. Try keeping the lid down and the bathroom door shut. Your dog may be unhappy, but your child will be germ-free.
Toddlers are also drawn to pet food. Fish food, bird seed, dried dog food – toddlers, with their perfectly reasonable logic, think that if it’s okay for the pets to eat, it must be okay for them to eat! After all, pets eat human food, so why can’t we eat animal food? Try gently reminding your toddler that animal food is only okay for animals, not for people. Be prepared for that ever-popular question, “But WHY?”
For more articles about parenting toddlers, go here: Toddlers
