What to Expect the Toddler Years (234 page)

If you live in a suburban or rural area, be on the alert for wild animals; skunks, foxes, bats, and raccoons can all carry rabies. An infected animal may behave in an abnormal way, and may be more approachable by humans than a healthy one. Keep garbage can lids on tightly to discourage foraging visitors and don’t leave pet food outside.

Limit play outdoors in very hot or subfreezing weather.

In hot weather, always check metal parts on playground equipment, strollers and car seats, outdoor furniture, and so on before letting your toddler come in contact with them. Metal can get hot enough, especially in a scorching sun, to burn a child severely with just a few seconds of contact.

Where there is water and a toddler, there is both pleasure and risk. Reduce the risk without reducing the fun by taking these precautions:

Keep swimming or wading pools and any other water catchments, even if filled with as little as an inch of water, inaccessible to unsupervised toddlers. When not in use, keep wading pools overturned, stored away, or covered, so they don’t fill with rain water.

If you have a swimming pool, fence it in. The fence should be at least 5 feet high on all sides. (Your house can serve as one side of the fence if all windows and doors on that side are alarmed. The keypad for turning off the alarm should be out of the reach of a toddler or young child). The fence’s vertical posts should be no more than 4 inches apart and not easy to climb (if of chain link design, the openings should be too small to allow a young child’s toehold). Entrances to the pool should be kept locked at all times; gates should open away from the pool and be self-closing with a self-latching lock that is well out of reach of children. An alarm that signals that the gate has been opened offers additional protection.

Never allow your child to use a pool with a missing drain until the drain is replaced.

If possible, install an automatic pool cover that meets the standards of ASTM International (astm.org)—but don’t rely on it instead of a fence, and never leave it partly in place (a toddler could slip beneath it unnoticed). Always drain a pool cover that’s filled with rain water as soon as possible.

If you have an above-ground pool that’s less than 4 feet tall, fence that, too. Steps and/or ladders to an above-ground pool should be inaccessible to children or removed when the pool is not in use.

Be sure there are no trees, chairs, benches, tables, or anything else around that your toddler can climb on to get over a pool fence or into an aboveground pool.

Remove toys from the pool and pool area when not in use—they can lure a toddler or other children toward the water.

Insist on supervision. Children should never be allowed to enter the pool area without a supervising adult, and an adult must continue to be present
and
supervising
every moment
as long as any children are there; a child who falls into a pool generally goes under in a few seconds and is unable to call out for help from the adult who walked around to the other side of the house. The supervising adult should try to maintain frequent eye contact with any children in the pool, should be familiar with CPR and what to do in case of a drowning, and should not be drinking alcohol—even one drink could impair response to an emergency. If there’s no stand-in available, and the supervising adult must leave, even for a moment, any young children should be taken along.