October 2015

Everyone knows babies are extremely playful and curious and that they will, as soon as they are able to, look to explore their surroundings as much as possible. This can bring headaches to a lot of parents that weren’t careful enough when decorating the baby’s room or weren’t minding what the baby has access to during its exploration.
Babies generally don’t leave their cribs until they are about three years of age, but this doesn’t always mean that the baby won’t be able to reach certain places in the baby’s room and ever other parts of the home.
As the baby’s first year will likely be spent inside your bedroom since most parents look to sleep with their child during this time, you should redecorate the bedroom in question in order to be as baby-friendly as possible. First and foremost, this will mean minding any pointy objects and edges of furniture that could injure the baby should it look to explore while there. Then you should take steps to preserve your property by denying the baby access to anything it might break or otherwise destroy.
Many of us keep a lot of valuables and fragile items in our bedrooms, from glasses and books to expensive jewelry. While the threat of a baby breaking some of these objects is certainly unpleasant and can end up presenting a considerable financial burden, the threat of a baby ingesting some of them is much worse and can have potentially devastating consequences. A child won’t really be able to know it’s not supposed to swallow a piece of jewelry, meaning that it’s your responsibility to hide any such objects safely away from the child.
Once the child is ready to move from the bedroom into its own bedroom, you should have already taken all the necessary steps to ensure that the baby’s room decor is absent of any dangers for your child. The furniture inside this room needs to be styled in a way that doesn’t provide any threats to toddlers, meaning that you are often best off purchasing furniture pieces specifically designed for babies’ rooms.
Furthermore, the crib of the baby means the difference between safety and peril as the walls of the crib need to be tall enough to completely negate any attempts of the child to climb it. Many of us aren’t aware of how well our children can climb furniture while simultaneously underestimating their curiosity and desire to know more. Therefore, it’s best to err on the side of too much caution rather than too little when choosing the right crib for your baby. If you believe that there is a high likelihood that the toddler will make constant attempts to climb it, don’t pick a crib too elevated from the ground as the fall could significantly injure the toddler.
Of course, you should have also taken steps to ensure that the child is safe even if it does exit the crib. As already mentioned, none of the objects in the baby’s room should pose any threat to the toddler should it exit its crib – it should find itself in a safe surrounding until you are able to return it back to where it belongs.
Also, the real fun starts once babies move out from the crib and into the toddler’s bed as they are often given free reign to roam not only the baby’s room but also the entire house. Here is where you will need to start being mindful of the entire home’s decor both to protect it as well as the child. An average house is full of places where a child might injure itself or fall from, and it is also full of objects that the child might break in its attempts to discover.
Try your best to keep anything valuable away from the child and even minimize the use of lamps and similarly breakable objects. This will avoid you having any misplaced anger towards your child over it breaking or otherwise destroying something you own. Children will always look to explore every area of the house as soon as they are given an opportunity to do so, as it is all part of their development – it falls upon the parents to optimize the home decor for such exploration.