The Parenting Journal

Most parents picture baby-proofing as something they’ll get to eventually, maybe after the first crawl. That’s the wrong order. By the time your baby is pulling across the floor toward the dog’s water bowl, you’ve already lost the window.The AAP...

Every year, about 3,300 children age 5 and younger are treated in U.S. emergency rooms for window fall injuries (CPSC). That number stops me every time I read it, because I know exactly how fast it happens. My younger daughter...

Every summer, a brightly colored inflatable pool appears in backyards across the country, and with it comes a risk that most parents underestimate. These aren’t deep pools. They aren’t complicated. They look like toys. But drowning is the leading cause...

The plastic outlet cap sitting in your toddler’s mouth is not a hypothetical. It happens. And the parents who discover it are usually the ones who installed the caps specifically to prevent a different kind of danger.This is the central...

The goal of a yes space is simple: give your baby a defined area where the answer to every question is yes. Yes, you can touch that. Yes, you can pull that out. Yes, you can explore freely. No redirecting,...

The loop cord hanging behind my nursery curtains didn’t look dangerous. It was tucked back, out of the way, and I’d been looking at it for months without a second thought. Then my older daughter learned to pull herself up...

Every year, about 3,500 infants die from sleep-related causes in the United States (CDC SUID data). That number is not a rounding error or a statistical artifact. It is the size of a small elementary school, and almost all of...

Every year, parents buy the same three things first: a baby monitor, a car seat, and a cute mobile for the crib. Then the baby starts moving, and the real education begins.Babyproofing is not a single afternoon project. It is...

Grandparents’ homes are among the most hazard-dense environments a toddler will ever encounter. Not because grandparents are careless. Because their homes were never designed with a crawler in mind, and the window between "grandkids are coming" and "grandkids are here"...