01:40 - Use safety outlet plugs
02:06 - Keep away hot iron from easy-access places
02:39 - Keep electric gizmos away from sink
03:08 - Keep away gadgets from soft cloth and away from toddlers
04:13 - Keep away sippy cups from gadgets when toddlers are playing with them
05:22 - Do a safety check 1-2 times a year around your home
Hey everybody, Harper Jones with Bow-Tiger and you are watching Saturdays with Harper.
Now as I was doing my spring cleaning, I'm still kind of in the middle of it, I came across an idea for a subject for the video blog I wanted to share with you guys. And it has nothing to do with cleaning. Don't worry. It's just something that I noticed while I was cleaning, and it was protecting my toddler against electrical shock.
Now I know this isn't the most popular subject or something that you'd really think about on a daily basis, but if you have ever experienced electrical shock, or had somebody in your family that experienced it, you know that it can be extremely detrimental and it can also cause death very, very easily. So this is something that is very, very important and we want to make sure that along with fire safety, water safety, that we also make sure that we understand how to protect our children against electrical shock in the home. So I wanted to go over a few ideas that I had, a few things that I had researched on ways that you can prevent that within the home for your toddler.
Now first of all, sockets these days, the different things that you plug your appliances into, they're basically created so you can't get shocked. The outlets to them are so small, so they basically only allow the appliances to be plugged into them, or your curling iron, or your iron, different things like that. So to think that a toddler is going to be able to get anything in there, including even a fork into one of those, it's not really likely that that's going to happen, but of course we want to make sure that we do still try to protect our children as much as possible, because even though it's not as likely to happen, that doesn't mean that it can't happen.
So the first thing that you want to do is make sure that you use the safety plugs for any of the outlets that you're not using. If there isn't something plugged into the outlet, use those little plastic plugs to push them in there. They're baby proof, toddler proof, and this will make it less enticing for your child even to try to mess with these things. And if they do attempt it, this is sort of a barrier between them and electrical shock. So that's the first thing that you want to do.
Now another thing that you want to do is make sure that... Let's say you're in your bathroom and you're using your curling iron or your straightener, or anything in the bathroom, or you're using an iron out in the living room to iron some clothes. When you're done with the item, you want to unplug it, put a safety back into that plug, and you want to make sure that that hot item is up and away from your child, not somewhere where they can grab the cord and pull it down and get burned by that item itself. I've had the experience of burning myself with a curling iron and I know it hurts really, really bad, so we want to make sure that our toddlers don't experience that.
Now another thing in the bathroom is a lot of the time we mix the curling irons, blow dryers, different things like this along with an area that can be potentially wet, and we know that toddlers like to get into everything. So you don't ever want to leave something like that on, near a sink. Even if the sink is dry and you've made sure it's all dry, you don't want your toddler to kind of climbing into the bathroom afterwards and turning that sink on anywhere near any of those appliances. So make sure to do that as well.
Let's see. What else? Oh, this is a good one. This is a really good one. This is something that... I mean I kind of heard a little bit back and forth on this subject as to whether it can actually happen, but I did research it and I found that there have been cases where this was actually true, your cell phone. Your cell phone is not something that you would think could cause a fire or cause a burn, but if you've ever noticed sometimes your cell phones will get super, super hot, especially if you leave them on a surface that's soft, like a cotton, or on sheets, or anything like that. Now there have been cases where those cell phones actually caused burns to a person, or caught fire, and caused a fire within the home. So make sure that you keep those appliances off of anything soft, and better yet keep any of your laptops, any of your computers, any cell phones, iPads, anything like this, make sure that you keep them up and away from the children. Even if they are down low, we don't really want our children playing with them anyways. We normally have a lot of important things on there, so just not allowing them access to that kind of stuff is a good idea.
Now the other thing with things like iPads and cell phones, I know that sometimes we do decide to use them to distract our child, maybe we're in the car and they're watching a movie, or maybe they're at home and we're letting them play an Einsteins game. There's lots of good, educational activities available for kids on tablets, iPads, iPhones, smartphones in general, but you want to make sure that you never mix that with one of the other things that your toddler nearly always has with them. And what is that? It's their sippy cup. They always have their sippy cup with them. I know that my toddler, she absolutely loves to carry around her sippy cup. It's a big thing for her. And granted, there's only water in it; I don't do sugar. Those sippy cups are supposed to actually be spill-free, spill-proof, it's not going to spill on anything, so no worries, right? Well, they're not always spill-proof. Most of the time they're spill-proof, but there is that rare occasion where they can spill. We don't want any electrical component mixing with whatever we have in that sippy cup. So make sure that you don't allow sippy cups around your toddlers when they're also maybe playing with your phone or playing with your iPad, etc.
The best way for your home, in general, to make sure that it is safe for your toddler is just to do a safety check maybe once or twice a year. Look out for things like lamps. A lot of the times they have those long cords that we run behind the couch or behind a table. Make sure that those are not visible to your child, they can in no way pull them, there's nothing frayed on the wires, and they can't have access to the actual outlet that the lamps are plugged into. And the same thing goes for appliances in your home, like you blender, toaster, all of those types of things. Of course we keep them high up, they're not typically within toddler's reach, but one thing that you can do to make sure there is no cause of fire is unplug those things at night. They do not need to be plugged in overnight or really when they're not in use. Those are kind of elective appliances, so you don't have to keep those things plugged in all the time and it's keeping your home safer if you don't. Now of course, your fridge, microwave, oven, things like that, those appliances were designed to be plugged in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so no worries on those. And then again, yeah, just make sure that you keep everything up and out of the way as much as possible, because that's the best way to keep your toddler safe.
Now guys, if you are watching this video on Facebook or YouTube, I'd ask that you please go check out the rest of our blogs, our video blogs on bow-tiger.com. And of course we'll be back next week with some new safety tips. Have a great day. Thanks.
