Home Safety, Room by Room

Childproofing has a reputation for being endless. It is not. A short list, done once in an afternoon before your baby is properly mobile, covers most of what actually hurts children at home. A few items on that list are not about bumps and bruises at all, and those are the ones this guide will not soften.

Do this first

Crawling arrives sooner than people expect, and pulling to stand arrives sooner still. Do the fixed jobs while your baby is still stationary, because the alternative is doing them one handed while chasing somebody.

• Anchor every tall or heavy piece of furniture, and every television, to the wall
• Cut or secure every looped blind and curtain cord in the house
• Move medicines, cleaning products, laundry capsules and alcohol high and locked
• Collect every button battery and loose magnet you own
• Fit gates at the top and the bottom of the stairs
• Set the hot water thermostat to about 120F

Then get down on the floor. Sit on the carpet in each room and look at the world from twenty inches up. You will see trailing cables, sharp corners, a socket behind the sofa and the small object you have walked past for a month.

The two that kill quietly

Button and coin cell batteries are the most urgent item in this guide. Swallowed, a lithium coin cell can burn through the wall of a child's oesophagus in around two hours, and the child can look completely well while it is happening. They are in remote controls, key fobs, kitchen and bathroom scales, thermometers, flameless candles, musical greetings cards, light up toys, hearing aids and reading lights.

Treat them like medicine. Buy devices with screwed battery compartments, tape shut the ones you already own, keep spares locked and high, and get dead batteries out of the house rather than into the kitchen trash. If you think a child has swallowed one, go straight to the emergency department, say the words button battery, and do not wait to see how they get on. In the US you can call the National Battery Ingestion Hotline on 800 498 8666 or Poison Help on 800 222 1222 on the way. Honey is sometimes advised for children over twelve months while traveling to hospital, but only while traveling, never instead of going.

High powered magnets are the other one. Loose rare earth magnets, the kind sold in desk toys and novelty sets, are harmless singly and catastrophic in pairs. Two swallowed separately attract through the wall of the bowel, pinch the tissue between them and cause a perforation that needs surgery. They do not belong in a house with a small child, and an older sibling's set needs to be somewhere genuinely unreachable, not just high up.

A swallowed coin battery can burn in about two hours, and the child may look fine throughout.

Living room and hallway

Tip overs kill and injure small children every year, and the great majority of those deaths involve children under five. Dressers, bookcases, shelving and televisions are all climbing frames to a toddler who wants what is on top. Anchor them into a stud or use the fixings that came in the box, put the heaviest things in the bottom drawers, and stop leaving the remote control or a toy on top of a chest of drawers.

Looped blind and curtain cords have killed a steady number of children in the UK since 2001, most of them around eighteen months to two years old, most often in a bedroom. A toddler can lose consciousness in seconds. Fit a cleat high on the wall, use a breakaway connector or a tensioner, or cut the loop out entirely. Then move the crib, the bed and anything climbable away from the window.

• Modern UK sockets are already shuttered, and safety bodies advise against plug in socket covers because they can hold the shutters open; older or overseas sockets are a different matter, so check the standard where you live
• Corner cushions on low glass tables, or move the table out for a year
• Cables gathered and secured, never left in a loop
• Diaper disposal bags and plastic bags stored high, because they cling to a face

Kitchen and hot drinks

A cup of tea stays hot enough to scald a baby for a good fifteen to twenty minutes after it is made. Most burns in small children are scalds from hot drinks pulled off a table or out of an adult's hand. Put the mug in the middle of a surface, never on the arm of a sofa, never on a tablecloth that can be dragged, and never hold a hot drink and a baby at the same time.

• Pan handles turned inwards, back rings used first
• Oven door locked, or a hard rule that the kitchen is a gated room
• Knives, scissors and blender blades in a high drawer with a catch
• Kettle cords shortened; hair straighteners stay dangerously hot long after switching off
• Dishwasher tablets and laundry capsules locked, not under the sink

Bathroom and water

Drowning is silent and fast, and a small child can drown in a few inches of water. No baby or toddler is left alone in the bath. Not at all, not for any reason, not while you answer the door, not with an older sibling watching, and not in a bath seat, which is a support and not a safety device. If you have to leave the room, the child comes out of the water with you.

Run the cold first and the hot last, and test the water with your elbow or a thermometer before your child goes anywhere near it. Turning the hot water thermostat down to around 120F removes the worst case. Empty the bath the moment you are done. Keep diaper pails, toilet lids, rain barrels and wading pools covered or emptied, and never leave a bucket of cleaning water standing on the floor.

The tube test

For choking hazards, use an empty toilet paper tube. If an object passes through it, it is small enough to block the airway of a child under three, and it does not belong on the floor. Run the tube around the living room once a week for a while. Pay particular attention to an older sibling's toys, coins, batteries, hair ties, magnetic letters, bottle caps and the small parts that snap off things.

Where they sleep

Safe sleep guidance is consistent across countries and is worth stating without softening. Babies under one go on their back, for every sleep, by every caregiver, on a firm flat surface with a fitted sheet and nothing else in it. No pillows, no duvets, no crib bumpers, no pods, nests or positioners, no soft toys. Room share for at least the first six months, with your baby on their own separate surface rather than in your bed.

Keep the room comfortable rather than warm, keep the head uncovered, and keep the crib clear of radiators, windows, cords and anything a standing baby can grab. Use the mattress made for the crib, and do not add a topper to make it softer.

Products, standards and helplines vary by country, and so do the details of gates, sockets and battery labelling. Follow your own national body, which in the US means the CPSC and the AAP and in the UK means RoSPA and the NHS, and check for recalls on any equipment you buy secondhand. A swallowed battery, magnet, medicine or cleaning product is an emergency department call, not a wait and see.

Where this comes from: CPSC, RoSPA, the NHS, the American Academy of Pediatrics.