The Parenting Journal

Falls happen. Every playroom floor is either part of the solution or part of the problem.The surface your child lands on when they tumble off a foam block tower, miss a step down from a play loft, or simply trip...

The nursery is the room parents spend the most time decorating and the least time stress-testing. That’s a problem.A beautiful gallery wall above the crib, floating shelves lined with soft toys and succulents, a dreamy mobile spinning overhead. It looks...

Nearly 1.4 million pediatric door-injury emergency department visits were recorded over a single decade in the U.S. (NEISS, 1999–2008). Roughly 4 in 10 of those visits happened to children age 4 or younger. That number stopped me cold when I...

The nursery you’ve spent weeks setting up looks perfect at 2 p.m. At 2 a.m., it’s a different room entirely. You’re navigating in the dark, trying not to stub a toe on the glider, trying not to wake a baby...

Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional injury death in children ages 1–4 (CDC). Not car accidents. Not falls. Water. And most of those deaths happen in home water, in bathtubs and backyard pools and five-gallon buckets left out after...

Toddlers discover the stove knobs shortly after they discover the stove.My younger daughter cleared an entire under-sink cabinet in the time it took me to answer the door. The stove was next on her list. I know this because I...

Every 15 seconds, someone in the U.S. calls a poison center about an exposure. America’s Poison Centers logged nearly 2.1 million human poison exposures in 2024, the equivalent of one case every 15 seconds. A significant portion of those calls...

Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional injury death in children ages 1–4 (CDC). Not falls. Not traffic accidents. Water. And in most of those cases, the child was last seen inside the house.A fence changes that math. But only...

Every child deserves a home that keeps them safe. For autistic children, that bar is higher, and the work is more specific.Standard baby proofing assumes a child who responds to danger the way most children do: flinching from sharp edges,...