The most dangerous room in the house

As a new parent, years ago, I thought of the kitchen being the most dangerous place or room inside a house or apartment. You know with all the knives and forks, with drink glasses and the plates, pots and the oven, not to speak of all the appliances that are in this room, it seems quite perilous to ever want your child to enter this room..... until he age of 18 (or so!). The smaller the kid, the bigger the hazard.

But then, again, as a new parent, we go out shopping, to child-proof the house, especially the kitchen. They have locks for the cabinets, locks for the dishwasher and locks for the refrigerator. They even have locks to prevent a child from turning on the oven themselves, unless you have an over where you can remove certain parts to avoid that. Please don't forget the plugs for the outlets, and to always unplug appliances that you are not using at a time. Even before kids, I unplugged everything from toaster to coffee machine, griddle or water heater - just being freaked out over the thought to accidentally leaving it on when I exiting the house!

Well, this morning I changed my mind!

This morning, I was under the shower when my boy came in because he needed to talk to me. (And yes, my kids are still allowed to see me naked, I don't want to raise them becoming prude - something I am so NOT - but this will be a future blog post!)
So he talked to me, climbing on the bathtub, falling off and getting hurt. And then it hit me! In this room, everything is dangerous! You fall in the shower or in the bathtub and you can really hit your head in such a way that it could cost you your life. Turning on the facet, the hot water can burn you. There are chemicals all over the place, under the cabinets, that a child should never get into their hands. You can fall and hit the tile floor and knock yourself unconscious! Inside this room, there are medicines that I would not want my child to find! Kids are curious and I would not want to find my kid reaching in the toilet or waste basket. Yuck!


So for me, after today, the bathroom is just the most dirty and dangerous room in the house!

Of course, we do have plugs in almost every outlet in the bathroom, just like in all the rooms of the house. We have locks on the cabinets. We don't have a lock for the toilet, but they are available in stores if you decide to install them. Also we can't really lock the shower door. And there is absolutely no way to keep a child from hopping in the tub and turn on the water. But the heater for the entire house is set on a pretty low temperature, so even the hot water might feel pretty hot to a child, it won't burn them severely. And we talk about not playing with certain things in side the house. Thank God, my kids are not playing in the bathroom, unless one of us parents is in there. I also try to buy green cleaning products for bathroom and kitchen especially, so if ever one of them would get into the chemicals, it's won't be too life-threatening.

Happy Parenting.