The Parenting Journal

Every time I walk past the nursery at 11 p.m. and hear the Echo Dot pick up a rustle, I think about how much has changed since my older daughter was born. Back then, a baby monitor was a one-way...

Doing this solo is harder than anyone tells you. There’s no one to say "hey, did you check under the sink?" before you leave the room. No second adult to watch the baby while you drill a wall anchor. No...

The holiday season is the one time of year most parents willingly bring a large, climbable, needle-shedding, cord-covered object into their living room and surround it with breakable glass and small shiny pieces. If you have a crawler, a toddler,...

Roughly one child every six minutes is treated in a U.S. emergency room for a stair-related injury. That number, drawn from a Nationwide Children’s Hospital analysis of CPSC NEISS data, stopped me cold when I first read it. I have...

The drawer my older daughter opened at 22 months wasn’t the knife drawer. It was the one below it, the one I figured was fine because it held baking sheets and a cast iron skillet. She pulled the drawer all...

Every state licenses daycare facilities differently, but the gaps between "licensed" and "genuinely safe" are where children get hurt. A license tells you a provider met the minimum bar on inspection day. It doesn’t tell you whether the cabinet locks...

The window between a child’s first birthday and third is the fastest developmental sprint of their life. In 24 months, a baby who could pull to stand becomes a child who runs, climbs, opens doors, and operates your television remote....

Every dollar you spend on baby proofing costs less than the first hour of an emergency room visit. That’s not a metaphor. It’s the math that should drive every purchasing decision you make in the next few months.The instinct to...

The holidays turn your living room into an obstacle course. Twinkling lights, dangling ornaments, flickering candles, a six-foot tree that your baby is already eyeing like a climbing wall. It’s beautiful. It’s also a hazardous environment for a child who...