Respond To New Skills To Help Keep Growing Babies Safe, Experts Say

Before a child is born, parents often spend substantial time and money baby-proofing their homes to help keep their children safe. You may have covered electrical outlets in areas the child can access, installed wifi baby monitors and more. But parents often forget to consider the changing skill level of a growing child when making and keeping a home safe for children who don’t yet know what can hurt them.

 

In the early years of their lives, children advance quickly, changing almost daily and sometimes developing new skills before you realize it. For total home safety, you must think about what a child is capable of doing based on their current developmental stage. When an advancing child moves from the confines of a crib, what can he or she reach, grab, crawl to or walk to?

 

A Wi-Fi baby camera is an important part of home safety. For Canadian parents, watching those skills develop and preventing injuries before they happen is now easier than ever – because the affordable MobiCam and the feature-rich MobiCam HDX with pan, tilt and zoom are now available on Walmart.ca.

 

Look For Potential Dangers At A Child’s Level

 

Monitoring, however, is only one piece of the puzzle in keeping a growing child safe. To locate and eliminate hazards before they become incidents or accidents, get down to a child’s level and look for potential problems.

 

What constitutes a hazard? Anything that a child can touch or even see while lying on the floor is a potential problem. As the child grows, things within sitting reach could be an issue. Then, you must concern yourself with things that can be reached from standing or climbing.

 

Only by getting on the ground and seeing the world through a child’s eyes can you see all the potential hazards. And of course, you can use your wifi baby camera to watch for things that catch your infant’s or toddler’s eye and take action to eliminate those things or make them safe as well.

 

According to Prevent Child Injury, a joint effort of several Canadian universities, organizations and public health authorities, you can take action to eliminate hazards that lead to 4 common kinds of child injuries:

 

Prevent falls.

Children will climb on anything, so it makes sense to eliminate as many climbing opportunities as possible. Children can even climb on furniture near a window – like a crib, dresser or changing table – and fall out an open window, so secure all windows. Additionally, tall furniture that isn’t attached to a wall can present a tipping hazard, and serious injury is likely if a heavy piece of furniture falls on a child. (Note that pets or others in a room can cause tip-over accidents that lead to child injury as well.)

 

Eliminate scalds and burns.

Just a second or two in hot water can cause up to third-degree burns, creating a lifetime of medical issues for a child who was healthy and happy just moments before. While there is some disagreement about what temperature a child’s bathwater should be, you can prevent serious injuries by setting the water heater in your home to 49 degrees C – that’s 120 degrees F – or lower. (A MOBI health thermometer can help you determine if bathwater, food and bottle milk are at a safe temperature.)

 

Preclude fire death.

All it takes to give you and your child a fighting chance of surviving a house fire is a smoke detector on every level and just outside every bedroom, including the nursery. An additional smoke detector in the child’s room never hurts either. Plus, carbon monoxide detectors can prevent silent and odorless gas from a heating system malfunction or other sources from harming your family.

 

Stop poisoning risks.

The easiest way to stop a poisoning from happening is to keep medicines, vitamins, plants, makeup, alcohol, cleaning supplies and everything else out of your child’s reach. If you believe your child may have consumed something he or she shouldn’t have, reach the American Association of Poison Control Centers at 800-222-1222 or Ontario Poison Centre in Canada (or a local center closer to home) at 800-268-9017.

 

Keeping a child safe includes many components, and it’s important to change your approach as the child grows and develops new skills. When you take the right actions – including installing a MobiCam baby monitoring system so you can always see what’s happening – your whole family can live safely and happily in a home that works for you rather than against you.