The Parenting Journal

The kitchen is the most dangerous room in your house for a toddler. Not the stairs, not the bathroom. The kitchen, where you spend the most time, where your child wants to be near you, and where a glass oven...

Nearly 1.4 million pediatric door-injury emergency department visits were recorded over a single decade in the U.S. (NEISS, 1999–2008). Roughly 4 in 10 of those visits happened to children age 4 or younger. That number stopped me cold when I...

Toddlers discover the stove knobs shortly after they discover the stove. My younger daughter cleared an entire under-sink cabinet in the time it took me to answer the door. The stove was next on her list. I know this because...

Every week, somewhere in the United States, a dresser falls on a child. That is not a rhetorical device. CPSC reports one child death every two weeks from furniture, TV, or appliance tip-overs. And the location where it most often...

The night my older daughter fell out of bed the first time, I didn’t hear it happen. I heard the silence after it, and then the cry. She was 28 months old, three weeks into her big-kid bed, and she’d...

Every year, parents who own fireplaces face a choice that feels deceptively simple: put something between the child and the flames, or don’t. The problem is that "something" covers a wide range of products, from flimsy decorative screens to serious...

Hardware-mounted gates are the only CPSC and AAP-recommended choice at the bottom of stairs. Pressure mounts can shift over time, changing latch alignment and swing geometry. Wall damage from pressure pads is often worse and harder to fix than two...

About 93,000 children under 5 are treated in U.S. emergency rooms each year for stair-related injuries, according to a Nationwide Children’s Hospital analysis of CPSC NEISS data. That number stops most parents cold. And yet the gate question I get...

Most modern homes have lever-style door handles. Most child safety products were designed for round knobs. That mismatch leaves a gap that a determined toddler will find, usually on the door you least want them opening. 87,000+ — Children under...