If your child is at that curious and increasingly independent age, you’ll want to do everything you can to make sure your home is a safe, healthy environment. Along with the kitchen, bathrooms pose perhaps the greatest risks to a child’s health, particularly if your house has family medications, lotions and potions. Read on to discover some easy ways to make your bathroom child-friendly.
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Toilet Training
Though it may sound unlikely, children can and do drown in toilets. Happily this is entirely preventable. By fitting simple toilet seat locks you can prevent your child from opening the lid and trapping their tiny fingers. Soft closing lids are another great idea, helping to avoid trapped hands and loud bangs! What a fantastic way of teaching the little man in your life that the toilet seat belongs down, not up!
Slippery Subject
As we all know, surfaces are slippery when wet, so make sure your bathroom floor has a non-slip surface, along with a rubber-backed mat to absorb splashes. Buy non-slip mats for the bath and shower, too to help avoid nasty falls. We’ve all had one. Grab handles are a good way to ensure your child stays upright when getting in and out of the bath, even under supervision.
Hot Stuff
Hot water scalds are very painful and frightening, whatever your age. Help your child stay safe at bath time by fitting child-proof temperature controls to your taps. Having a bath thermometer to hand is another great idea.
Medicinal Mayhem
The bathroom is where most of us keep family medicines and medical supplies, and in the wrong hands disaster can easily strike. Even if your bathroom cabinet is high up out of reach, make sure it’s kept locked. There are countless horror stories involving small children and medicine cabinets, but this is one headache that’s so easy to avoid.
Bin And Gone
Your bathroom bin, like the cabinet, should be secured against prying fingers. Without thinking you probably throw all sorts of things away, from old razors to empty containers, all of which can prove hazardous in the wrong hands.
Step Up
To help your child to use the bathroom comfortably, a little set of non-slip steps will be very useful, particularly at toilet training time. Reaching and grasping at objects just out of reach will lead to bangs and breaks, so make it easy for your little ones to access the areas that are safe for them.
Out Of Reach
It goes without saying that breakable containers should be kept out of reach, but better still opt for safer versions made from plastic. These don’t need to be any less stylish and will withstand more punishment.
Door Policy
To prevent your small children from using the bathroom when you aren’t around to supervise, why not fit a bolt on the door where they can’t reach? Adding that little extra security step is so easy, but will give you real peace of mind, especially during the night when you can’t always see what your little darlings are up to.
Child safety is paramount everywhere in the home, but these quick tips offer you an easy guide to potentially the most hazardous area of the house.
