I'm really not sure what to do about babyproofing our baseboard heaters. we have a 200 year old house and the basebaord heaters are around 90% of the living room. they get insanely hot and our recently turned 1 year old likes trying to put his fingers or toys in them. we rent so I'm not investing 1k in covers for them. so far we've put baby gates and furniture all over in front of them but it's messy and driving M. nuts
You are going to have to teach him, there is J. nothing else out there except J. never leaving him alone which I think would be harder than teaching him hot.
Hot. No. Hot. No. Hot. No. Over and over.
If it were M., I'd gate that room off so that, unless you are actually in the room with your child, they can't be in there alone. We put a large gate around our woodstove. You could also buy one of those 'corral' play yards or pop kiddo in a pack-n-play in there if you have to leave the room. Not sure what else to suggest. Infants and toddlers need to be watched and contained in some way at this age.
We did nothing when we had baseboard heaters. We J. said NO. HOT. And repeated. Both our kids J. learned they were hot and did not touch them. We did watch them carefully at that age though.
M - your son is going to have to learn the hard way...you can tell him NO. You can tell him it's hot. Unfortunately, the only way he's going to learn this one is by experience.
NO! I am NOT telling you to take your son over there and put his hands on it. You tell him No. You tell him it's HOT and will hurt him. Stop with all the "protectors" seriously - they aren't going to learn that way. And yes, we put up gates at the top of stairs - kids can move fast. Other than that? no.
I'm sorry that's not the answer you want to hear, but that's my opinion. We NEVER moved things in our home. Why? Because our children NEEDED to learn NO. I would NEVER expect anyone to change their home for M. if I brought my child over. Kids need to learn to LOOK with their eyes and NOT touch with their hands.
This is something you will have to constantly tell your toddler to not do. Be careful of putting furniture or anything in front of the heater or you could burn your house down.
I am sure once he goes near it while they are hot he will back off, but keep telling him no.
I agree with those saying you J. have to be vigilant in redirecting the baby. It's a pain at first, but it shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks and he'll figure it out. I didn't use baby gates or safety latches for anything and at times it was a handful, but mostly it was fine.
we've always had baseboard heaters, and we taught the boys from the time they could roll around 'hot!'
apparently we did it well. 'hot' was BOTH of their first words.
but if you don't want to do that, you either invest in covers or you deal with the mess of baby gates, right? i mean, what else is there?
khairete
S.
