Now that the holidays are approaching, my wife and I are beginning to prepare for when our young grandchildren, and grandnieces, come to visit. We go from room to room, to ensure there is nothing dangerous, a crawling, or toddling, or curious young child can get into. Infants and toddlers are amazingly fast when they want to explore something, so it is really important to keep potentially harmful things out of their reach. This is particularly true for “attractive nuisances” liquids and solids that infants are drawn to because of their color or smell or both. But attractive nuisances also include things that can be easily knocked over and broken.

We usually start in the kitchen. We keep many of our cleaning materials, liquid soap, scouring powder, etc. in the under the sink cabinets. A toddler can easily open these doors so we empty these cabinets of any all materials he or she might get into. Inasmuch as these are the only cabinets at floor level, we fill them with light pots and pans and plastic containers that the children can take out and use for play. Paper and plastic bags however, should always be in out of reach containers. Early on, my wife taught me that when I am cooking, to always keep the handles of the pots and pans facing the counters and never extending over the top of the stove. Particularly when young children are about, and you have to move quickly, it is all too easy to brush against a pot or pan handle, that is hanging out from the top of the stove, and knock the contents onto the floor. Commonsense, to be sure, but an important safeguard.

We next move to the living room. As in the kitchen we ensure that there are caps on all the wall outlets and that any lamp cords are not accessible. Perhaps the greatest danger for little ones in the living room, and dining room, are the sharp corners of the furniture that children can bump into. We have only a few sharp corners on a chest we use as a coffee table so we put cushioned corner guards on these. We also remove anything that can be easily knocked over and broken.

Then we go to the guest bathroom, the only one accessible to our young visitors. In the bathroom, we simply put childproof latches on the under the sink counters. We also put a childproof wastebasket, one with a lid, to prevent the baby from knocking it over and exploring the contents.

All this may sound a little like overkill, but it is always better to be safe than sorry. We love having our grandchildren and grandnieces stay with us and we don’t want to have to worry about their getting into something dangerous, if we are not watching. In this regard, I should also say that we have a big box of wooden blocks, lots of plush and pull toys and loads of picture books for them to look at and play with and that helps keep them out of trouble. We also have a limited set of DVD’s that they can watch when they are tired and ready for a nap. Keeping the house safe, having many things for the children to play with and enjoy, makes for a stress free and happy holiday for everyone.