Safety
Reins and Wrist Links: When They're Useful and When They're Not
British parents call them "reins"; Americans call them "harnesses" or "leashes". The cultural baggage is strong in both — every parenting forum has a...
7 min read
Safety
Keeping your child safe at home, outdoors, and everywhere in between.
Safety
What Doesn't Belong in a Cot — and Why
A safe cot is a boring cot. The 'cosy' look — a quilt, a pillow, a stuffed animal in the corner — is the look that increases SIDS risk; the empty look...
7 min read
Safety
Safety Gates: When to Install Them and Which Kind Goes Where
A safety gate is one of the few baby-proofing items that prevents the high-stakes injuries directly. Stair gates, in particular, sit in the top tier o...
7 min read
Safety
The Foods Most Likely to Choke a Small Child
A small child's airway diameter is roughly the width of an adult drinking straw. Foods that match that diameter, are firm enough not to compress, and...
7 min read
Safety
Furniture Tip-Overs: The Hazard That Kills More Children Than People Realise
A small child climbs an open drawer of a chest of drawers like a ladder. The chest tips. The child is pinned underneath; in the worst cases, with a TV...
8 min read
Safety
Floor Hazards: Rugs That Slide, Cords That Trip, Tiles That Hurt
A surprising amount of household injury in mobile babies and toddlers comes from a small number of mundane floor problems. Rugs that ride up. Charger...
6 min read
Safety
Cuts and Scrapes: What to Do at Home and What Needs Stitches
A lot of long-standing first-aid advice for cuts and scrapes was wrong. Hydrogen peroxide and iodine, the two staples of every parent's first aid box,...
7 min read
Safety
First Steps: The Six Months When a Toddler's Falls Get Bigger
There's a stretch of about six months in every toddler's life when the household injury rate genuinely spikes. It's the bit between "can stand if held...
8 min read
Safety
First Aid Every Parent Should Actually Have in Their Head
The reality of parental first aid is that you'll use it rarely, and when you do, you'll have about 30 seconds before adrenaline takes over. The list o...
8 min read
Safety
Fire Safety in a Home with Small Children
House-fire deaths in the developed world have dropped dramatically over the past 40 years, and almost all of that gain is attributable to one thing: w...
7 min read
Safety
How Children Fall — and What Changes Each Age
The fall a 3-month-old takes is fundamentally different from the fall a 2-year-old takes. The mechanism, the height, what they hit, and what's likely...
8 min read
Safety
Reducing Fall Risk Once a Baby Starts Moving
A crawling baby is going to fall, and a baby who's just starting to pull up will fall harder. That's not a failure of supervision — that's the develop...
8 min read
Safety
Sockets, Cords, and Appliances: What's Actually Worth Worrying About
The plug-in plastic outlet covers in every baby aisle are a strange product. In the UK, they actually make sockets less safe; in the US, they're redun...
6 min read
Safety
A Family Fire Plan That Actually Works (and Takes 30 Minutes to Set Up)
A modern house fire develops faster than the picture most people carry around. Older furniture (cotton, wool, solid wood) burned slowly enough that fa...
7 min read
Safety
When to Take a Child to A&E After a Fall
Children fall constantly. Most of the time it's a bump, a cry, a hug, and back to play. The job for a parent is to know the relatively short list of s...
7 min read
Safety
Anchoring a Chest of Drawers to the Wall (Properly)
A child climbs the open drawers of a chest of drawers like a ladder, and the chest comes down on top of them. It's a fast, silent injury — toddlers ca...
7 min read
Safety
What's Within Reach: A Floor-Level Audit of Your House
The single most useful child-proofing tool is your knees. Most parents already know which categories of object are dangerous; what they miss is which...
7 min read
Safety
When to Throw a Toy Away (And When You Don't Have To)
A toy that was safe in the box can become a hazard a year later — not because it's been mistreated, but because parts loosen, paint chips, magnets wor...
6 min read
Safety
How Often to Disinfect at Home (Less Than You Think)
A lot of household disinfection advice was written in 2020 and never updated. Three things have become clearer since: 1. Most respiratory viruses spr...
5 min read
Safety
The Rooms and Spaces Most Dangerous to a Baby Under One
The danger map for a baby under one is different from a toddler's. Until they crawl, a baby goes wherever you put them — so the risk is concentrated i...
6 min read