Once you have a baby or children, these are the most common hazards you need to be aware of and keep out of reach of your children, these little Batmen, Supermen and Spidermen are always trying to be tiny suicide machines.
Here are 10 child hazards you must check!
1. Dangerous Furniture
Anything heavy – wooden or metal – like cupboards and wall units do fall or topple over when unstable, so keep them screwed on the walls or well-balanced to avoid accidents.
2. Heavy blankets and Duvets
Heavy beddings in a cot are silent killers; a baby cannot kick them off their tiny face or roll away. Keep huge blankets and duvets from an infant’s bed, to avoid suffocation.
3. Car Seat Comfort
Letting a baby sleep on the car seat for too long can cause positional asphyxia – this is a fancy word for your baby may stop breathing when their airway gets blocked. Once you’re done with the trip, get them off.
4. Water Hazard
Water in containers, basins, karais, buckets, and bathtubs should be kept away from toddlers. Bathrooms and toilets should stay locked to keep toddlers and children away; it only takes one minute for a kid to fall in, face-first.
5. High-Risk Choking Food.
Anything Round, fruits like grapes, nuts, popcorn, crisps, veggies like peas and the unnecessary teething necklaces and candy a.k.a sweets can easily choke kids under 4 years.
Keep your jewelry away; those cheap pearly necklaces from Dubois can easily break and get into a child’s mouth and nose.
6. “Strangle is real”
Wires and cords, ties, blinds strings and ropes, I know you’ve never thought of its possibility but kids can easily wrap these on their necks for fun, and within a minute they’re struggling to breath when you’re in the other room oblivious of the situation.
The curiosity goes beyond toddlers – even kids up to 7-8 years old are at risk.
7. The kitchen
Forget about those overly done “Open Kitchen” concepts apartments and bungalows in Nairobi, they’re not toddler safe.
Babies have no business crawling into kitchens. When they do, they will be turning those stove knobs, grabbing hot pans, and getting their tongues in the sockets, trying to stir it up. Keep them out of the kitchen.
8. Cooking Pots on the stove.
Beware of the cooking pots with handles sticking out, children can easily pull these pots over causing unnecessary accidents. Always turn them inwards. Every. Single. Time.
Better yet, use the rear burners instead of the front ones.
9. Round Toys
Stuff like “Bano”, coins, buttons, petfood, ball pen caps, and any other roundish item or small enough to fit their mouth should be kept away.
Beware of cereals as well, kids will actually stuff beans in their noses for an experiment. Haven’t we seen it?!
10. Balconies
Most Nairobi balconies are not child-safe. Children will easily climb over or squeeze themselves in these rails. We have seen heartbreaking cases of kids falling from the 2nd and 4th floors, and kids getting their heads stuck in these rails.
So, children should never be left on the balcony unsupervised.
The Bottom line: everyone thinks that their kid is “too smart” to do some of these troublesome things. But children will do anything because they generally lack survival instincts.
Keep kids safe by preventing accidents before they happen.
If I missed a hazard you have witnessed, please share it below!