Home Safety Tips for Children During School Closures

With everyone being home for the majority of the day, home safety is more important than ever. If you have children, you’re probably juggling work from home with monitoring your kids in their remote learning and general playtime. Let’s face it, it’s impossible to keep an eye on children the entire time. The likelihood of an accident occurring is higher with everyone home all day and night. So, what can you do to help keep your kids safe? Here are a few home safety tips for children during school closures.

1 – Minimize Hazards

The first thing you can do to keep your kids safe is to minimize hazards throughout your home. Here are some examples:

• Tighten loose handrails along stairs.
• Keep hallways and walkways clear of debris that might cause tripping or other injuries.
• Secure furniture (bureaus, bookcases, etc.) and appliances that might tip and fall on children.
• Keep dangerous items (knives, firearms, matches, lighters, etc.) out of reach and perhaps even locked up.
• Lock up dangerous chemicals and substances such as cleaning liquids and medications.
• Move furniture away from windows in children’s rooms so they can’t easily access them and/or fall against a window while playing.
• Secure fencing around pools so that kids won’t access pool areas without an adult present.

2 – Review Safety Precautions

It’s a good time to discuss home safety with your children. Even if you’ve done this before, children need repetition and reinforcement, so sit down and discuss things again. Chat with them about things they are allowed to do, not allowed to do, and/or should handle a certain way for safety reasons. Some examples are:

• Plugging in electronics and other devices.
• Using appliances such as toasters, ovens, stovetops, etc.
• Opening doors for visitors and/or package deliveries.
• Playing Outside.
• Social distancing.
• Phone and video calls.
• App usage (especially those that interact with other users and have messaging features).

3 – Best Practices

There are some best practices to adopt for general home safety. For instance:

• Lock your doors and windows.
• Turn on door chimes within home security systems (helpful particularly if you have younger children who may wander outdoors without asking permission first).
• Close blinds or curtains during evening hours so that others can’t see into your home.
• Set up indoor cameras so you can monitor children while working in a separate room.

We’ve written quote a few blog posts in the past about home safety, which you can read about here.

More Home Safety Tips for Children During School Closures

To identify other home safety tips for children during school closures, put yourself in your kids’ shoes. Go into a room and look around. What might your kids touch, explore, or play with? As kids look for activities to stay busy while mom and dad work, they may touch or try things that they normally wouldn’t. A quick check of each room can help you spot potentially dangerous items or situations. With some proactive checking, you can avoid injuries in your home.