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Dear parents,
One of our primary concerns as parents is the safety of our children. They depend on us for nutrition first, but also for everything from diaper changes, the clothes they wear, the place where they sleep, cuddles and kisses, a clean house, bandaids, car seats, child-proofing, to owning kid-friendly products, teaching them safe practices while out and about, and more, all of which are connected to keeping our little bundles of joy safe.
And nothing brings out the mama and papa bear in us than hearing, or just fearing, that our children may not be safe.
For this edition of #TLBsafeKids newsletter, we are zooming in on safety in our homes. There is a balance that all parents need to strike between creating a bubble-wrap world for their kids and letting them have an all-access pass to everything in the house. One extreme leads to kids – and then adults – with limited problem-solving skills and a stunted understanding of their own limits. The other is more or less a test of survival with the real possibility of severe and lasting consequences.
Some of the safety precautions that we have chosen for our home have come straight out of our own near-tragic experiences.
For example, we have never had much aesthetic appreciation for blinds, but every home that we have lived in has had some for us to enjoy. When EarthBaby, our first child, started toddling around, we found ways to make sure the pull-strings were safely out of reach of her little hands. We tied them up in knots, we hung them up over the blinds, we were creative. Fast-forward a number of years and a few children, and Jessica and I went on a trip, entrusting our children to some dear, trusted friends with children of their own. While we were away, one of our children ended up getting tangled up in the strings of their blinds, with one section of string pulled up tight around her neck. Fortunately, our friends got her untangled right away, with no more serious injury than a slight rope burn on our child’s neck. They relayed the story to us, horrified, and explained that it has been a while since they had small children in the house and didn’t think of all the ways they needed to child-proof their house. In our current house, we simply took the blinds down, preferring to risk someone taking a peek into our open lives than to keep the ugly things up. If we were ever to choose to put them back up, we would most likely invest in a cord winder like the ones Rhoost makes for home safety.
I won’t go into as much detail with other examples… read more here.
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With a crazy 2 year old I am constantly checking our doors. She is so smart she has learned to unlock our deadbolt so we had to install a higher lock. She can also unlock and open/close our back patio slider door so we need to make sure she does not have anything to slide over to stand on to do it!!