Safety 101: Keeping Your Toddler Safe in Their Bedroom

A few simple rules to follow to keep your toddler safe in the bedroom:

*Make sure the crib mattress fits tightly in the crib.  You should not be able to fit more than two fingers between crib and mattress.  Toddler’s head could get trapped between mattress and crib rails

*If you are using an older crib make sure that the crib slats are no more than 2 3/8 inches apart (new cribs meet this requirement).  In addition make sure that there are no missing rails.

*Make sure all hardware on crib is properly installed and tightened.

*The use of bumper pads, pillows, heavy quilts, and stuffed animals is not recommended for children under the age of twelve months.  Use sleepers instead.

*Try not to place toddler’s crib by a window.  If you must place it by a window, make sure it is locked and/or secured out of the reach of tiny toddler hands as they can be quite resourceful when they want to be.

*Make sure there are no blind cords hanging down where toddler can get to them.  This is true for the crib and any room.  We wound our blind cords up very high and secured them with either an electrical tie or wrapped and tied it up well out of the reach of our children.  Several toddler’s have choked to death on these cords.

*Make sure that toddler’s closet can be opened from the inside, so that they do not become trapped.  One thing that we did was take the closet door off and allow our toddler access to the closet.  We placed their toys down low and everything that we did not want them to get to on the upper shelves.