Childproofing Your Kitchen

Video Transcript

"Let’s begin with the kitchen. We all know that this is a place that is extremely dangerous to children. The best thing to do as a parent is to actually get down on your knees- hands and knees- and look at the situation from their point of view. This way you can see what they’ll get into and you will be surprised. There could just be a piece of dog food for instance that can come loose. Or just a tiny little bit of food that will go underneath a drawer- underneath your cabinets. And this can choke a child.

Also, when we have children, we take it for granted when we’re cooking. Because to leave the end part of the pot or pan out like this, which as adults we don’t even think about, all we have to do as a child is tip it with hot grease and boom! There it goes, right on their hands, face. So always turn your pots and pans with the handles outside from here, to here. Very simple, we take for granted as adults.

Toasters. Never put children on counters- they always want to be with you everywhere you go, but, you place a child on top of your counter- here is an accident waiting to happen. Also, garbage disposals. You don’t think about it, but their hands can right into a garbage disposal as a coffee pot could tip, just like that- hot coffee. Glass on here. So what we need to do is not place our children on counters as we all like to do as parents to keep them close to us.

Other things in the kitchen area is underneath, we take for granted what we put in the kitchen. Anything that is dangerous like this can go into a child’s mouth, which is poisonous. Simple things like dishwashing solution is also very hazardous for children. And then, of course tiny little bottles which their hands can get a hold of easily, straight into their mouth and they are very, very, very sick. Dishwashing cubes which we have now look like candy to children and at two years old, they can easily place these into their mouths and be very ill. So we don’t want to put anything underneath as we are being used to doing for little children. We want to start placing things up at a higher level."