Greensboro, NC -- When it comes to childproofing your home, we had Angie Hicks, founder of Angie's List, weigh in.
"First and foremost is supervising your child, but if you're thinking about childproofing think about your home from the perspective of your child. Get down on the floor and actually crawl around and you'll be amazed by what you see," she said. "A lot of us just think about outlet covers and baby gates but when you get down there, you can find things that might catch their eye and you'll have a whole different persecutive on childproofing."
When it comes to common mistakes parents tend to make, Hicks said, "A lot of people are not thinking about all the potential hazards in their home. A lot of things we hear about are not securing heavy objects in their house, little toddlers like to pull up on everything and unfortunately you hear stories where furniture or televisions fall over on children and hurt them, so you want to make sure you've got those things secured," said Hicks.
"The other items we hear about are windows and draperies. We don't even think about that. The child's room has windows of course, but you want to make sure the cords for the windows or blinds are secure and your baby's bed or crib is away from it so those cords are out of reach," said Hicks. "And also on a nice evening we might be tempted to open the window and let the cool breeze in but keep in mind it's actually safer for kids with the windows closed because those screens are not going to keep your child in if they decide to push on that screen."