Info & Ideas for Keeping Children Safe

Childproofing Your Home
This website, Child Care Resource and Referral, is a statwide program in Arizona to help familes with child care. It provide information on child safety. Children are inquisitive, and they sometimes seem to move like greased lightning. Before you know it they are into something they shouldn't be, something that you hadn't even thought of until it was too late. There are more than a dozen very specific tips for making the kitchen safer for children, more than half a dozen safety tips for the bathroom, and more than a dozen specific tips for making the living areas and the bedrooms of your home safer for children. Tips cover things such as making certain that curtain pulls are kept out of reach of children who can become tangled in them and strangle themselves, to keeping houseplants out of reach, to installing safety gates at the tops and bottoms of stairs, to setting your water heater to below 120F to prevent scalding, to making certain that all medications and cleaning supplies are securely locked away at all times, plus more than 30 additional tips and hints for making your home a safe and happy place for children.

Choosing a Babysitter
This article on WhatHappensNow.com on finding and choosing a good baby sitter is based on interviewing babysitters, babysitting agencies, the American Red Cross, and moms and dads. The advice is grouped into the following categories: Starting Out (i.e., finding candidates), Consider This... (make a list of your needs and requirements), The Sitter Interview (questions to ask candidates), Test Run (an interesting idea for you and the kids to get to know and evaluate the babysitter based on a short period, such as an hour where you run an errand), Post-Sitter Pow-Wow (speaking with your children afterwards) and the Babysitter Info Chart (information to leave the sitter before you leave).

Safety in the Home with a Child with Autism
This Living with Autism section of the Autism Society of America website provides a good deal of information about the special concerns and issues parents of autistic children face in making the home safe. A few of the special safety concerns of autistic children are climbing, throwing, breaking, jumping, peeling, cutting, pulling down, throwing utensils, plates and cups, sweeping items off surfaces, dumping drawers and bins, and climbing out of or breaking windows. Additionally, behaviors such as touching hot items, chewing on electrical chords, putting metal objects into electrical outlets and the like make it mandatory that the caregivers of Autistic children take special care in "childproofing" a home. This article deals extensively with ways to child-proof a home for an autistic child and ways to help train an autistic child to recognize dangers around the home. If you have an autistic child or if you are the caregiver for an autistic child, this site is a must-read.

Pesticides and Child Safety
This page by the Maryland Department of Agriculture has good information on the potential threat to children of pesticides and offers recommendations for preventing accidental exposure or poisoning. It cites an EPA survey that says nearly half of all households with children under age five had at least one pesticide stored in an unlocked cabinet less than four feet off the ground. Bathrooms and kitchens are the area in a home most likely to have the improperly stored pesticides. Examples of common pesticides found in these rooms are roach sprays, chlorine bleach, disinfectants, rat poison, insect and wasp sprays, repellents and baits, shampoos and dips for pets, as well as weed killers and pool chemicals. Do read this page if you have children, as it provides insightful information and recommendations, including for treating hazardous exposure to pesticides (e.g., swallowing, in the eye, on the skin, inhaled).