There is an increased awareness of the hidden dangers that are in the bathroom. January is National Bath Safety Month. While we all could stand to be a little bit safer in all aspects of our day, parents of small children are especially plagued by accidents and injuries because of how curious little kids can be.
If you think about the bathroom from the perspective of your children, it is a playground really. There are bottles with fun squirt nozzles on them, containers of water to splash, and floors to run and dance on. Little do they know, those squirt bottles are full of dangerous chemicals, the water could be burning hot, and if they slip on the floor they could seriously injure themselves.
It is the adults’ responsibility to teach kids what is safe and unsafe, make sure to look around your bathroom and implement any of these safety tips that are applicable:
- Medications. If you have over-the-counter or prescription medications in the bathroom. Make sure they are kept in a locked medicine cabinet. Even if they are in containers with child-proofed caps, taking the extra measure to keep them locked away is essential to ensuring safety. If you can, designate one bathroom in the home where medications are to be stored and only keep them in that bathroom. This way, you can regulate better who has access and who doesn’t.
- Hot water. It is very important to check the hot water that comes out of the faucets in your bathroom. Especially, when you are filling the bathtub and getting ready to place your child in it. But, one way to dramatically reduce the chances of the water being too hot is to make sure the thermostat on the water heater is not set any higher than 120 degrees.
- Bath mats. The floor of the shower or bathtub and the floor of the bathroom itself can be very slippery when it gets wet. But, adding a non-slip mat to the floor of the tub or shower and bathmats to the floor outside of the shower or tub is a great way to significantly decrease the chances of a slip and fall accident.
Make sure to assess how safe your bathroom is by considering some of these tips. Even adding bathmats to your bathroom floor is an easy and inexpensive way to reduce any accidents that might occur in your bathroom.