When your little one is starting to crawl you want to make sure that you baby proof your home from top to bottom. But is all this really necessary or just hype so that you can spend money on all these “baby proofing” stuff that doesn’t really work. Guess what, I refused to baby proof my house with all those gadgets.
I probably puppy proofed my house more than I did for my daughter but that was about 15 years ago, way before I even thought of having a kids. We all know how much babies love putting stuff in their mouths and sticking their fingers where they don’t belong but whether you have all those fancy gadgets to keep them safe, they are going to find a way to do it anyway. Think in terms of a burglar,no matter how sophisticated your alarm system is he is still going to find a way to get into your house.
Sure we wanted our baby to be safe, what parent doesn’t but we live in the real world. I wanted to teach our daughter from a young age right from wrong and about consequences. No matter how many times you tell a child no, they are going to want it even more. No matter how many times you move them away from a particular object they are going to go right back to it – it’s what they do. These are the only four products we used around our house:
- Baby gates for the stairs – we already had them for our dogs
- Outlet protectors
- Protective padding around the coffee table
- Gate around our pellet stove during the winter
That’s it. My sister had given me those things for the draws but I couldn’t figure out how to put them on and if I had trouble with that I knew I would get pretty annoyed trying to open the draw when I needed something. Like all crawling babies, Buggy was into everything. I would put laundry away and she would open the draws and pull them out. When she would close the draws I would tell her to “watch your fingers” and at first that meant nothing to her and I would help her close them and repeat the words. Of course there were times when I would say that to her and she would pinch her fingers but she learned from that experience. She learned to be careful when she was doing something. She applied that lesson to anything she was opening or closing.
I don’t know how many times a day I would say “don’t jump on the couch, your going to fall off”, or “no, no, no put that back”. She totally got it though and when I would have to take something away from the dogs she would shake her little finger at them as if saying no, no, no – it was totally cute. She definitely heard the word no a lot. I didn’t have locks on the kitchen cabinets either and one day she opened one up and grabbed a box of dog biscuits. She had fun tasting them. You can see my little Buggy here.
How much baby proofing did you do?
Irene
Posts
Absolutely zero. I didn't even more what few breakables we had to higher shelves. Like you said they will find a way, they always do. For me it was easier to teach them no when doing something that could cause harm or break something than it was to always worry about it. That and as much traveling as we did I knew that the friends and family we visited wouldn't be 'baby proofed' and I didn't want them to have to worry about it when we were headed that way. People were always amazed at how well the girls behaved and wouldn't touch things or etc. Sure they would head to do it, what kid doesn't, but a well placed and firm no would stop them in their tracks and they would change course.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that people move breakables out of reach but teaching the kids not to touch and saying NO is great and also teaches them manners like in your case when you go to other people's houses that don't have children. They need to know how to behave outside the home as well
ReplyDeleteI am a professional childproofer and I did very little. Obviously gate and window bars, and furniture and TVs that can tip are now strapped to the walls. Now I just have to do a pool fence
ReplyDelete