The Parenting Journal

A child’s finger can be in the wrong place before you even register the door is moving. That’s not a slow-motion parenting failure. It’s physics, and toddler speed, and the fact that hinges and door frames are basically designed to...

Most parents think of the refrigerator as a food storage appliance. Toddlers think of it as a project.My younger daughter proved this definitively at 22 months. I answered the doorbell, was gone maybe 90 seconds, and came back to find...

Every toddler I’ve met treats the stove like a magnet. The knobs are exactly at eye level, they click satisfyingly, and turning them produces an immediate result. My older daughter figured out the gas burner igniter at 22 months, long...

The kitchen is the most dangerous room in your house for a toddler. Not the stairs, not the bathroom. The kitchen, where you spend the most time, where your child wants to be near you, and where a glass oven...

Nearly 1.4 million pediatric door-injury emergency department visits were recorded over a single decade in the U.S. (NEISS, 1999–2008). Roughly 4 in 10 of those visits happened to children age 4 or younger. That number stopped me cold when I...

Toddlers discover the stove knobs shortly after they discover the stove.My younger daughter cleared an entire under-sink cabinet in the time it took me to answer the door. The stove was next on her list. I know this because I...

Every week, somewhere in the United States, a dresser falls on a child. That is not a rhetorical device. CPSC reports one child death every two weeks from furniture, TV, or appliance tip-overs. And the location where it most often...

The night my older daughter fell out of bed the first time, I didn’t hear it happen. I heard the silence after it, and then the cry. She was 28 months old, three weeks into her big-kid bed, and she’d...

Every year, parents who own fireplaces face a choice that feels deceptively simple: put something between the child and the flames, or don’t. The problem is that "something" covers a wide range of products, from flimsy decorative screens to serious...