Childproofing your house : Impossible!!
“Please could you tell me how to childproof my house?” was the request received recently in RoSPA Headquarters. Agencies are opening for business claiming to childproof homes. The term childproofing is gaining in usage as witnessed by a recent Google search by this correspondent. Childproofing is a dangerously misleading term implying either that 100% safety is achievable or that children are a force against which the home needs to be defended. This article will demonstrate that minor accidents are part of a child’s normal experience and that safety training is an essential part of a child’s nurture.
Accidents are the major cause of death for children up to 15 years old. A million children attend casualty departments due to home accidents throughout the UK. Parents are naturally alarmed when they hear these statistics and wish to do anything to protect their offspring from danger. Hearing that an agency can provide what seems like a guarantee of safety, many parents are willing to pay for a service that can never completely achieve its mission. They need to be better informed about child development.
Accidents are a way of life for children. Parents become accustomed to the collision, the silence and then the heart-rending wail as an infant lets the world know it’s hurting. Minor injuries are quite often recognised after the event by children displaying the souvenir bruises on legs and arms. School accident books bear witness to constant grazes, bumps and scrapes as children experience close encounters with hard playgrounds, walls and even other children.
A realistic parent knows that many of these accidents are inevitable and usually easily treated; part of a child’s development. An unrealistic parent sees these experiences as negative scores on a parenting scorechart. Frequently, people in general need to be persuaded to admit they have accidents, possibly seeing such admissions being a sign of weakness or guilt.
Agencies, websites, leaflets and posters provide a wealth of advice for those caring for children. This bank of knowledge will contribute to making homes and gardens as child-safe as possible but it will not make any location childproof. All those caring for children, their own or other people’s, need to be vigilant and constantly reviewing practice to improve the quality of their care. But realistic, practical common-sense shows that minor accidents will always be a feature of growing up.
Parental supervision is paramount for all young children. Limits to the area in which children operate, the materials children can use and the activities they enjoy, all need to be set appropriately to the age of the child. This is a skill that parents themselves learn as their children develop. While the child plays, parents will learn immediately about what is suitable and sensible for children to do. As children gain different skills so the limits in which they operate will change. What children most desire during these times of development is a consistency; a parent who says “No” one day but “Yes” another causes confusion within the child’s mind. As the child grows older so good talk by parents will inform the children why these limits are set; as children achieve certain skills they will be rewarded by the freedom to use these skills more independently.
Accidents that do happen are frequently the coincidence of different factors which are not always within the control of a parent/carer. Changing a nappy with the baby on a raised surface combined with a knock at the front door, a telephone ring and the cry of an older child in distress, is one example. Parents learn by experience to prioritise that the baby’s position is hazardous and needs to be made more safe before any of the other signals are responded to. How many of us have regretted a decision in the heat of the moment when with hindsight it was clear that other priorities should have been considered? It is the nature of human beings that we make some wrong choices and suffer the consequences. On other occasions we avoid a tragedy and only begin to realise the horror we narrowly missed as we review the events afterwards. Life would be a very uninteresting existence if, in fact, everything was perfectly safe and risk was never an issue.
All of us take risks everyday and over time we become expert in a range of minor choices about crossing the road, using tools in the kitchen or DIY situations, handling lethal substances. Children are starting out on this journey and will encounter the consequences of their actions and will learn like we do how the world works. Parents/carers can try to look ahead and spot likely hazards and control them but there will always be the one incident in a thousand that takes us by surprise.
When researching “childproofing” on the internet, a range of safety products were introduced. In many cases, there are good quality, innovative products on the market that can reduce the risk of accidents. It is equally the case that a safety product in the hands of someone who does not appreciate its purpose(s) and its limitations can become a hazard. For example, the safety gate that has been left propped in a hallway to be tripped over by any member of the family passing by. The recent Government funding for home safety equipment is to be welcomed but questions must be raised about how the money will be spent. There are a variety of equipment schemes in operation at present where the managers decide how to allocate equipment and may or may not help with the fitting. Sometimes the householders are left to fit and use the equipment themselves; sometimes it is fitted and advice is given. What happens to this equipment when it is needing repair or replacement? How many people are picking up used equipment in car boot sales that has not been checked for further safe use?
Child-resistant closures on medicine bottles and other hazardous substances for domestic use are absolutely not childproof. The aim of such caps is to provide a little time in which parents/carers may spot that a child is accessing a potential poison and intervene to prevent the substance being ingested. Unfortunately, the weakness of the cap is that some children are actually quite adept at opening these caps, often when asked by an older person struggling to find the necessary finger power and dexterity to open it themselves. Hopefully, these children have reached a level of maturity or experience that they know why the caps have been used and are aware of the substance’s lethality.
To conclude, all readers of this article are invited to be on the watch for the term childproofing and to contest the viability of such a term whenever the opportunity arises. Agencies purporting to provide childproofing services could re-brand themselves as child-developing services, providing advice to parents about how to perform one of the hardest and yet best-rewarded vocations; raising children to live life to the full but to learn on the way how to cope with the multiple hazards that are inevitable factors in life.
Colin Morris
Regional Home Safety Manager (West of England)
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