Kitchen Appliance and Choking Hazard Safety

Find out more about kitchen appliance safety and what you can do to protect your children from hazardous appliances and danger of choking.

Hello! I am Colleen Driscoll. I am the owner of a childproofing company called Baby's Home Safe Home. Today, I am talking about childproofing the kitchen. Now, we are talking about appliance safety and choking hazards. I like to start with the stove. It's a common place for injuries to occur. My first tip is to remove dish towels. Children might remove the dish towel when they are crawling over to the stove possibly causing a fall, or possibly opening the over door. You can also add oven locks. This will slow kids down. These are secured with adhesive. All adhesive products should be regularly checked to make sure they are secure. Also, investigate oven locks, you might have an oven lock on your oven right now. Check the manufacturer's instructions. You can also use stove knob covers. These are a great way to slow kids down from turning on burners, particularly if you have knobs in the front of your stove. Also if you have gas, it's important to use those to prevent children from turning on the gas. We also recommend that you cook on the back-burners. If pots are hanging out, the side or possibly the front, this can be very dangerous. For this particular location, it's a tough spot because there really is only one safe burner. Supervision is always going to be very important when you are cooking. This is a sample of a stove guard. This is only one panel, but if add a stove guard to your stove, you can put one across the front or along the side and it would come with multiple panels to prevent children from reaching out and touching the hot stove or hot burners. This is a sample of a stove anchor bracket. If you open your oven door, you will find a warning label inside that talks about the possibility of tip over. Some children have opened the door and climbed on the door and the stove has tipped over. So check to make sure you have anchor brackets on your own or stove. Some times they are not installed. So you might have appliance person come and help you with that. The microwave can also be dangerous and in some kitchens the microwave is located high up. You may want to consider having an appliance latch installed. But children do love buttons. So if they are located up high, this is generally okay. Don't store cookies above the stove. Sometimes you create an incentive for climbing. We want to make sure children are taught not to touch a hot stove and not to touch a stove at all. This a danger zone and it's important for you to educate your children about safety and this is a great place to teach no touch. Another appliance in the kitchen is the toaster oven or maybe a toaster. We recommend that you unplug all small appliance for children safety and also to prevent fires. Another appliance is the dish washer. I recommend you unload and load the dishwasher when your child is napping or not in the kitchen. Also, only add the dishwasher detergent when you are ready to run the dishwasher. Most dishwasher detergents and corrosive and we don't want children playing with them. Children generally like buttons on dishwashers. It's important to keep the dishwasher locked and keep in mind that you probably have knives, glassware or other dangerous items in the dishwasher. So it's not a great place for your child to play. The refrigerator is another appliance in the kitchen. Inside you might find choking hazards such as food or you may find medicines or glassware. You could rearrange by making all your glassware is up high and your plastic-ware is low and just being careful. Children like to play with water on the refrigerator. If you have a lock off device on your refrigerator for the water dispenser lock it. You will often find children coming over and wanting to play with the water, because they love water. Another thing about the refrigerator, that's where we usually find choking hazards. Magnets are a common choking hazard in the kitchen. You want to test them by using a small objects tester. If it fits in the small objects tester, it's a choking hazard. Most families don't have one of these at home. So you can use an empty toilet paper roll. If it fits inside the empty toilet paper roll you want to remove it. Other common choking hazards are door stops. The little rubber cap on the end is a choking hazard and many children are drawn to them because it's at their level. That's one important baby-proofing tip, get down at your child's level because you can find some of these dangers. We replace door stops, the safety door stops that are all one piece, so there is small parts for children to remove. Other choking hazards include batteries, berets. We don't recommend that you put berets in young children's hair. Balloons, even felt pads that you might find on the bottom of a piece of furniture can be a choking hazard. And sometimes these fall off when you least expect it, but your child finds it. Coins can be choking hazards. Also other decorative things around the kitchen or house might be choking hazards, anything that's going to fit in your empty paper toilet roll, you want to move out of your child's play environment and out of reach. Wicker can be a choking hazard. Children break off pieces of a wicker basket and can stick it in their mouth. So we recommend that you remove wicker basket. Choking hazards can also be found in food. These are some common food choking hazards. Grapes, pop corn, hard carrots, hotdogs, candies, nuts and raisins. Avoid giving these food to young children. I recommend you talk to your pediatrician about when to introduce foods and what type of foods. Another common choking hazard in the kitchen is your pet food. Children often like to explore on the floor and they find cat and dog food. It can be dangerous if they try to eat it. It is a choking hazard. Sometimes you just need to remove the pet food and pull it up on the counter. Some dogs are great and they will eat the food all at once, so you don't have to worry about your exploring child trying to eat it. Children also like to play in the water bowl, that's another great reason to pull the water bowl and pet food up on the counter. Now, that we have finished talking about choking hazards and appliances, we are going to move on to electrical hazards and the counter-top.