Every year, plenty of children experience injuries in the home. A large portion of these occur in the bathroom. All these injuries are completely preventable. When it comes to the bathroom, there’s good reason to make it as child-proof as can possibly be, to ensure you are not witness to a mishap that might stem from the inquiring mind of your wandering toddler.
Bathroom Safety Tips for Children
Wondering how to make your bathroom baby proof? Here’s a look at some tips!
Tips to prevent slips and falls
You might be doing your best to keep the baby away from sharp objects, but what about ensuring they don’t slip and fall? One place that’s prone to occur more than anywhere in your house, is the bathroom. If you’re looking to ensure bathroom safety for babies, you need to have this one covered.
Why? It’s pretty obvious. Slips and falls cause injuries; some of which can be fatal. Besides, the last thing you want is your child to bear lifelong scars from such incidents.
What to do to prevent slips and falls in the bathroom
- Remove any throw rugs on the floor.
- Ensure your bathtub has a non-slip mat.
- Tell your children to sit whilst in the process of being bathed.
- Install those ‘grab bars’ on your shower doors, or even in the tub.
- Make use of faucet coverings. These will limit your child’s chance of getting cut if they fall.
Keep them away from anything electricity related
Even adults need to stay away from electricity! The last thing you want is for your child to get a shock from an appliance that has just been left carelessly lying around. One of the most important bathroom safety tips for children.
What to do to prevent electricity-related mishaps in the bathroom
- Any electrical appliances you might be using, that find their place in your bathroom – like electrical razors and hair dryers, need to be unplugged and stored in a safety cabinet when they are not in use.
- It’s best, really, to keep your electrical appliances in another room where there is no water.
- Have an electrician come and install special bathroom wall sockets. What these will serve to do, is decrease the chances of electrical injury in the case of an electrical appliance falling into the sink or bathwater.
Keep Junior Tarzan at bay
If you’ve got a little one, you have to know this: they love to climb, even if you haven’t seen them climbing yet. In fact, they will be all the more eager to climb when there’s nobody around. Gravity is certainly something they have no fear of, you will find. You have to ensure that kids in the bathroom are kept safe from this dangerous act of ‘climbing’ that might just go terribly wrong.
What to do to deal with a climbing child
- Keep all sharp items like razors, tweezers and scissors, locked away in a cabinet.
- Encourage your child not to climb when you see them doing the same at bathtime.
- Put covers on those doorknobs.
- Stop them from even entering the bathroom at all. Install a lock on the door to make sure that the only time they find themselves in the bathroom is when you’re around.
Medicine and toiletry storage
Imagine what would happen if your child got a hold of any one of the several pills you have stored in a bathroom cabinet! We nonchalantly leave medicines and toiletries lying around; things that can prove to be extremely dangerous to an unsuspecting toddler. Bathroom safety tips for children are incomplete without this one.
What to do to keep medicines and toiletries out of reach of your children
- Keep all those medicines in containers with safety caps.
- In respect to the above point, store the said medicines (along with any cosmetics you might be in the habit of keeping, as well) in a cabinet high enough to be out of baby’s reach.
- Don’t keep items that are frequently used, like toothpastes, soaps and shampoos, in the same cabinet. Instead, like those medicines, you could keep them in a cabinet that is out of reach of the baby. Better still, install a lock on that cabinet!
Preventing Water Accidents
When talking about safety risks in the bathroom, one cannot underestimate the danger posed by something that might seem harmless to one and all: Water itself! It becomes something of a ‘slippery issue’ for children, who don’t realize where the negative effects of their imagination might lead them in the bathroom (think drowning, burning). You won’t imagine how in a matter of seconds, things can go terribly amiss.
What to do to prevent Water Accidents
- If you have to leave the bathroom, take your child out of that tub and with you.
- Ensure that you install child-proof tub knobs so your child can’t turn on the water by themselves.
- Install child-safety locks on the toilet and keep those lids down.
- Monitor the water temperature to make sure that kids do not burn themselves.
Additional Bathroom Safety Tips for Children
Here’s a few more things you need to bear in mind, when ensuring bathroom safety for babies.
- Make sure the floor is always fully dry. Running kids and a wet bathroom? Never a good combination!
- Use an anti-scald valve. This will make sure the water never goes above 120 degrees F.
- Don’t leave hot tools like hair dryers and flat irons unattended. This means, not even for a few seconds.
- Cover water faucets with cushioned covers. This will help minimize the impact when the baby bumps into them.
- Give them your undivided attention. Simply being in the same room with them is not enough.
For children, bathrooms are fun places where they can enjoy bathing. As a parent, you have to create the safest possible bathroom environment. Things can go wrong in a matter of seconds, so make sure you do everything in your capacity to ensure that never comes to pass. Visit EuroKids for more information.
