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When do parents normally un-babyproof their home?
When are your kids old enough for you to un-babyproof your home?How does that work?
Do people get new furniture or leave sharp edges exposed? I guess they at some point remove those kitchen cabinet locks?
Thank you 🙂
the locks and gates come off when the kids figure out how to take them off.
the house never really reverts to pre-baby days, even when babies grow up. it just gets filled up with their stuff instead.
And then the grandkids start coming over…Lightbrite,
When are your kids old enough for you to un-babyproof your home?
Depends on the family. By age 3, many toddlers can open baby gates themselves and can pull chairs over to access items on shelves, and babyproofing gives way to chinuch. But then there may be younger siblings, and eventually iy”H grandchildren.
BTW, sharp edges can be a bane for adults too, not just children!
they remove it when they know they will not be having any more children in the future, so they don’t have to keep taking down & then putting it back on for the new baby, they keep it on forever until the mother is finished having more children
We never ‘babyproofed’ our home.
Setting and teaching boundaries early and watching the children closely avoids most problems.
That said there are certain safety items that are now building code. We just pulled an electrical permit for a little remodeling work. We were forced to bring the existing work to 2017 code requirements. Think meant that all electrical outlets had to be childproof. They are made so that a child can’t just stick something such as a paperclip into the socket and get shocked/electrocuted or start a fire.
Our kitchen has locking doors, and we keep them locked so no child or non-immediate family adult enters on their own,
We keep cleaning supplies and other chemicals (wasp/hornet spray for example) in locked cupboards.
Having 4 dogs we don’t keep breakable items out on tablesBy time your youngest “baby” no longer is a baby who needs the house baby-proofed, your first grandchild arrives — so you’ll still need the house baby-proofed anyways.
But then there are people who have grandchildren before their youngest is born.
It depends. We probably left the outlet protectors in for a longer period then the cabinet locks. The gates for the stairs were on even longer. While I agree with CTL about setting boundaries, one of the rooms of my house had 10 outlets when we bought the house. It was easier using the outlet protectors.
What age of the youngest do you start removing the baby-safety features of the house?
CTLAWYER,
We never ‘babyproofed’ our home.
But then you go on to describe replacing outlets with child safe ones, keeping the kitchen locked, keeping chemicals in locked cabinets, and keep breakables out of reach. Most people would call that babyproofing.
Joseph: If you are asking me, since we didn’t keep breakables and poisons in under the sink cabinets we took them off when our youngest was about 1 year. outlets – 4 – 5 years old
Once you put the cleaning solutions, etc up high, and put away breakable coffee-table things, you get used to them there, and they just end up staying there, even when baby is no longer a baby.
Also, there are all types of babies/toddlers. For one of my kids, I had to close up/lock up everything – including the toilets, even stove-top knobs were removed. He climbed out of his crib at 14 months, and figured out how to get past the baby gate by his door soon after. For the other kids, keeping chemicals and sharp objects out of reach was enough.
By the way, in Israel, the outlets are high, around midway up the wall, not low on the floor, so they are not accessible to crawling babies, or even standing toddlers, although of course an enterprising toddler can always pull up a chair…“We never ‘babyproofed’ our home.
Setting and teaching boundaries early and watching the children closely avoids most problems.”Same
avrum – As I understood it he said that he didn’t baby proof, then he said that he had to make some changes because of changes in the building codes which are similar to what you would do for baby proofing.
Syag Lchochma,
As I understood it he said that he didn’t baby proof, then he said that he had to make some changes because of changes in the building codes which are similar to what you would do for baby proofing.
Agreed on the outlets – he did mention that he upgraded his electrical in 2017. But he also mentioned locking the kitchen and keeping chemicals and breakables up (albeit the latter for his dogs). Other than gates on the stairs, that’s all we have done to babyproof our home. And yet we also set boundaries and supervise closely. I don’t see it as an either-or.
Avram in MD……………….
Replacing the outlets was required to bring the renovation area up to State of CT current building code. Our youngest is 20 (married this past Sunday). The area being renovated is Mrs. CTL’s Real Estate home office…no babies in there either, but it’s the law.We’ve always kept cleaning chemicals and bug chemicals, etc under lock and key. Not to keep babies away, but a senile grandparent who lived with my parents once poured liquid rat poison into the soup while cooking. We’ve had non-English reading cleaning help over the years and feel safer this way.
Our kitchens are locked because we live in small town New England. The nature of our OOT living is that non-Jewish and non-Frum neighbors and associates are often in our homes for meetings (political, etc.) This way no one who doesn’t understand the true workings of a kosher kitchen goes in and attempts to help by putting things away, grabbing the wrong serving piece, etc.
Keeping breakables off low tables is to prevent the dogs from breaking them, not babies. Again, our youngest is 20, but our youngest dog is 4.
In some ways dogs are like big babies without opposable thumbs.
Babyproofing a house is a woman’s role. A woman is a homemaker, so she is in charge of designing and building the house. And because she always sees her children as her little babies, she won’t unbabyproof till the grandkids are all grown up.
@lightbrite
I know I’m a lot older than you.
What your grandparents and Great grandparents did is a function of where they lived and their income.
My great grandparents lived in NYC. They had electric lights in their homes, not oil lamps and candles.
By the late 1920s the icebox in their homes had been replaced by GE refrigerators.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you wish to improve A/C efficiency and reduce entry of dust from inside the drywall to your living space. Go to Home Depot or similar and buy the foam inserts made for behind switchplates. They are available in single or doubly gang size and have punch outs you remove for outlets or switches. You unscrew the switchplate, punchout the shape of the outlet or switch, insert the foam piece and reinstall the switchplate. You’ll find that this also cust down on drafts from aoutlets and switches on outside walls that are under insulated.CTLAWYER,
We’ve always kept cleaning chemicals and bug chemicals, etc under lock and key.
It’s still an element of babyproofing, even if the original intent was senile-relative/non-English-speaking-help-proofing. I’m sure once you had young children in the house, their safety became part of the calculus for keeping those items away, despite the boundary setting and supervision.
Our kitchens are locked because we live in small town New England.
Yet your lead-off reason for locking the kitchen given above was “so no child…”, so obviously children were part of the equation here too, not just your non-Jewish houseguests.
Why do you find it problematic that someone might consider the safety measures you have taken in your home to be considered babyproofing?
It’s not problematic, it’s just that none of these things were done for ‘babyproofing’
A child does not equal a baby…(going into the kitchen to get a serving piece, etc.)
I locked chemicals in my home when I was a single based on my parents’ methods. They started doing it when the youngest was already Bar Mitzvah and no grandchildren.The fact that a baby might be safer because of these methods does not make it babyproofing.
For example, we never had gates on the stairsHow could you say such a thing? Typical liberal–it’s okay to call a baby a child, but it’s not okay to call a child a baby? Children are babies. They need to accept this fact as truth and move on! Stop being such sore losers, liberals!
At least now that we have a conservative, upstanding president, he can officially declare the age of baby to be from birth to 16!So it’s just a matter of having different parents and grandparents then.
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