For National Baby Safety Awareness Month, I wanted to address the importance of regular safety checks on your baby proofing. Many of us think that once we put up the gates, strap the TVs and furniture to the walls, plug the outlets and complete the other necessary safeguarding in our home for our babies, we can just forget about it under it is time to take it all down. Not true.
We all know how important it is to baby proof our homes when our babies can start moving around. You’ll keep many of those baby proofing gizmos in place until after the kiddos leave for kindergarten. That is a good five years that the sockets will be plugged, the stairs will be blocked (okay, the gates usually come down much sooner!), the TVs and furniture will be strapped and the doors, toilets, and cabinets will all sport some type of locking device.
It is imperative that you do periodic checks to your safety devices and products just to make sure that they are still in working order especially with those products that are installed for years like TV and furniture straps.
I was reminded of this today. After 8 years, our main TV in our living room broke. Since it was so old (in the TV world!), it didn’t pay to try to fix it (again!) so we went TV shopping. We upgraded our 46″ LCD to a 60″ LED TV. Woot! Woot! Did we need 60″? Nope. Am I super excited to continue watching Game of Thrones on 60″? You betcha.
So, we are changing out the TV and even though my youngest is four, I still want my TV strapped to the wall or stand. It’s just too big and until we mount it on the wall out of reach, we have to use TV straps. Those are the straps that prevent a large TV or tall piece of furniture from toppling over on your child and possibly killing them. Yes, I said it, killing them. These are very, very important straps!
Our Baby Gizmo video today highlights one baby proofing product that slipped my mind and taught me a good lesson in the process.
