3 Most Common Mistakes: Childproofing
Expert advice from the president of Childproof-America.
by Babble Editors
July 25, 2008
What are the three most common childproofing mistakes?
Expert: David Cooperberg, President of Childproof-America – Interview by James Brady Ryan
1. Choosing pretty over practical
Most things, anyone who's handy can do. The issue is, do they know what to do? Take the example of gates. There are basically two different types of gates: one is called the pressure gate and one is called the safety gate. A pressure gate, as the name implies, works just by having it in a pressure situation against two walls. So there are screws at either end with discs on them and you just screw it until it's tight. That will work in some situations, but the one place that you do not want to install a pressure gate is at the top of the stairs. Your kid goes running down the hallway, trips right before the stairs, goes flying into that gate, and I don't care how secure you think it is, it's going to go flying down the stairs with the kid. And it's desirable but not critical to have a gate at the bottom of the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, what's going to happen? A kid may walk up one or two stairs and fall back and bump their head, but it's not like falling down a flight of stairs.
So you really need to use the safety gate, and the safety gate is one that is hardware installed. You have to, at least on one side, screw it into the wall. Some people say, "Gee, I don't want holes in my wall." What we typically say is, "Well, you hang paintings and if you ever want to move them there are going to be holes in the wall. You just patch them, touch it up and when you repaint the wall you'll never see it again." It's the same thing here. There's a trade-off between aesthetics and safety, and you've got to make those decisions.
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