[mondk]

Dh and I are going to end up in a fight about this! He isn't here a lot of the time and doesn't see all the stuff Joshie tries to get into and when he's home he doesn't want to do anything except mow the yard and sit on his butt, so I'm getting really irritated with him. I will put the door up myself if I have to; how hard can it be?

He thinks Joshie is an angel; ARGH! Just tonight Joshie got under the kitchen sink and was turning the cap on a bottle of Clorox! It's either a screen door or locks on all the cabinets in the kitchen! Which I'll probably have done anyway in due time.

Had to vent!!!!!!! (Sorry)

Blessings, Michelle

ETA: I forgot; dh said it's not fair to Joshie to "lock him in" his room...what did the gate do when we had it????

[oceanica]

Sounds like a good idea to me! I think you should enlist FIL or somebody to install it.
Hope you work it out with DH.... it's probably hard when he doesn't see all that stuff and just sees sweet little Joshie climbing up on his lap!

PS didn't the new gate work?

[RavenSong]

(((Michelle)))

May I make one gentle suggestion? Remove ALL household cleaners and chemicals from under your kitchen sink! I'm not kidding -- I've taken care of my fair share of kids who've swallowed bleach...and it's not a pretty picture.

Anyone who has small children in the home really needs to look at everything from their kids' eye level. It is so much better to be safe than sorry. Believe me, if there is anything dangerous within a young child's reach, just remove it...stay on the safe side. ERs treat children every single day, every single hour for the ingestion of poisons, household cleaners, medicines, and even stuff like antibacterial soap and dishwashing soap.

I know it can be inconvenient to store these household cleaners in hard-to-reach cabinets, but you really don't want to take the chance with Joshie. You're too good a mom....

[mondk]

Raven: I'm making a list for my cleaning lady and I think I'm going to move all the cleaning supplies to my shelf above my washer...that would be another good thing for her to do!

I haven't got the new gate yet, but went to some gate website and the one I got got some pretty bad ratings; should have read there before I bought...anyway, I can use it for the office and then the screen door for his room. I found a nice screen door for $35 at Lowe's.

Blessings, Michelle

[DianeS]

Just FYI, since Joshie is accustomed to leaning against his gate to make it pop open, make sure any screen door you get will hold up to the same amount of leaning without the screen popping out the same way the gate did.

[quantum]

Forgive me for not knowing the whole story here! A screen door on a kids room seems a bit extreme, but like I said, I don't know the whole story.

I guess I'm wondering the circumstances you think it would be helpful?
My girls are now 6 1/2 and 4 1/2 so they are a bit past toddler stages, but it hasn't been so long, so I remember!
We had locks on all the kitchen cupboards and drawers that they could get into. We put a hook lock on the laundry room door (and have all the cleaning stuff and dishwasher tabs etc in there). We put a hook lock on the bigger bathroom's door (got tired of the running around playing with the toilet brush). Kept stuff out of reach and/our out of sight.
It also was a REALLY tough time. I couldn't do anything else but watch the kids. That was my job then! I got a break when DH was home, or they went to their grandparents house. I also took them to an open preschool one or two days a week (a playgroup really at the local church, open to everyone).
If it was stuff I just really didn't want them to mess with, but it couldn't hurt them, I learned to accept that was going to be the situation...ok, we have DVD boxes everywhere, pick them up, put them back. that was that.

As far as nighttime went, I have to say, the only place they seemed to want to go if they woke up in the night was to our bed! And we've let them, but that's just our family, I realise that isn't for everyone.

So, no criticism here! You just seem to be a bit at your wits end, and I'm wondering if childproofing your home a bit more can help? It's not a phase that lasts forever! And as Raven was saying, somethings can really be dangerous, even if there was a door on his room that was shut all the time.

Good luck

[tinktink]

My DD is almost the same age as your son. She is 'spirited' to say the least. Yet the idea of a screen door isn't sitting well with me. Why do you want him in his room by himself so much? I am afraid I don't understand. We keep the bathrooms shut so there isn't a danger of drowning, my chemicals are all stored with cabinet locks or in the utility room that is shut. At night the hallway is gated so she can come to my bedroom but yet still cannot wander the house while I sleep. There are alarms on the doors. The knives are in a locked drawer. Electrical plugs installed. This is what we do at my house. I understand that it is scary to feel like you have a LO trying to get into every hazard in the home!

ETA - This seems like a big thing for your DH too so IDK how comfortable you are with really wanting to make such a different parenting choice than he does.

[quantum]

I like heather's idea of gating the hallway so he's limited to where he can access IF he gets out of bed at night.

[Stormster]

I'll never forget going to someone's home who had more nick nacks than I've EVER seen and a toddler roaming around. The grandmother who's house it was was raising this little boy and said she simply taught her kids not to touch. I always remembered that as an extreme example but also one that showed what was possible.

I think we can't rely soley on baby proofing gates and such because our kids need to learn (I'm not talking about the bleach, I agree with Raven that really needs to be out of reach) but the whole Montessori method of treating kids like little adults so they can learn how to be in the world.

So we had gates but took them off asap. We also didn't use a play pen. We simply made the house as safe as possible (except for the oven/stove and certain drawers in the kitchen which are very "proofed")

At the same time, i am a SAHM with one kid. I never judge other parents: twins, sensory seekers, other issues that make it almost impossible to keep a 2 or 3 year old safe. So if the screen works I say use it. Only you know if it is unavoidable.

Our house IS set up for the gating off the hall method but yours may not be.

We have a glass/french door on E's room. When he's in big boy bed not sure if we will keep it closed or what but not sure I'd feel right locking it! Still never say never, we shall see!

[OakShannon]

We've used the same method as Stormster for David. And he's a very adept climber and door opener, so he gets into everything. We have all household cleaners and medicines in a closet that locks with a key. (I don't trust those baby proofing knobs. He'll crack those any day now.) We have toilet and 'fridge locks and locks on kitchen cabinets that aren't safe. Knives are kept up high. Everything else is toddler safe.

But Michelle, I think your original concern was that Joshie gets up at night when you can't watch him, right? I'm still shuddering at the lightbulb chewing episode. He needs a lot of supervision. So I can see why you need some way of keeping him from wandering at night. I don't know about a screen, because I've never seen a screen that wouldn't eventually break if you leaned on it hard enough. But I can totally understand the need for something - a better gate or a french door. If your DH isn't comfortable with a screen, have him problem solve with you. What would his solution be? Because clearly this is a problem that needs to be solved ASAP.

[soupnazi]

Yeah those plastic cabinet locks are junk.

I use these...they seal completely tight so the kids think they are locked & stop trying.

Safety 1st Tot-Lok Magnetic Lock Starter Kit

[robandjulie]

Screen doors aren't that hard to install--depending on the type you can do it yourself but it may be heavy to lift and hold it by yourself. I bet Brad can help enough to get it done.

I know where you are coming from although from a different side. We had a friend with a cat that would NOT stay out ouf their DS's nursery and would keep waking the baby up. Gates didn't keep the cat out; closing the solid wood door wasn't something they wanted b/c of air flow/visibility/hearing the baby. So they switched the solid door out with a screen door. They could keep the door shut all the time to keep the cat out. When DS got a bit bigger they made sure the room was very safe and since it was on the main floor by the livingroom/dining room it served as a nice low-key play space where he could look at books or take a few toys in to play while she was running to the basement for laundry or hopping in the shower, etc. Most screen doors have an option to replace the lower screen with a glass or plexiglass panel to keep pets from tearing up the screens and they used that in the lower half once he got older.

I think it's COMPLETELY reasonable to do this. I've considered doing it for DD (4) b/c she hates when the dog & cat wander into her room at night but also hates having her door closed (visbility/security) and gates are too hard for her to open&close but a door she could do by herself.

However, despite the annoying pests (er, pets...), both kids have open doors and so do we and the bathroom upstairs is open but all dangerous items are high up in a child-door-handle-proofed closet and and high up in the medicine cabinet. Both kids are potty trained so we have to keep the bathroom accessible. We did, for some time when DS was newly 2 until 2.5, keep a gate at the top of the stairs which kept him confined to the upstairs if he got up and wandered around. That worked well for us, but only you know your houseplan and what may work. Perhaps a screen door or wall-mounted gate in a hallway or other location may be a compromise you can reach with DH?

All that said, yes, take that bleach attempt as a giant red flag warning that all that needs to get moved. We keep ours in a basket in on a shelf above the washer/dryer, along with the toilet bowl cleaner, etc. Our cabinets all have knob handles so we use the ones liek this http://www.nichelocks.com/catalog/images/10810.jpg which are really nice b/c we don't really have to tighten and loosen them, we just have them somewhat snug and hook them over and around. We also work a lot on what's "not for Jorgie," but for truly dangerous stuff I can't rely just on their judgement and training yet IMO. I tell the kids not to go in the street but I certainly wouldn't trust that enough to let them play in the front yard unsupervised, kwim?

This stage will pass. Promise.

[KarenInCa]

-sorry- this double posted.

[KarenInCa]

You definitely have an active and curious child on your hands!!
I agree with the person that said to remove all the chemicals from under sinks. Sounds as if you're working on that one.
Child latches on all accessible cabinets (kitchen, bathroom, etc) are also a must in our household.
The way I've always dealt with babies and toddlers; anything (and I mean anything) I don't want them to have access to, including breakables, get boxed up or put up out of reach until they're much older. I have a collection of Madam Alexander dolls, which I've always kept in a glass case. My daughter gets in to that glass case and puts her "valuables" in it now, every once in a while. So, until I get a lockable glass case, or she's much older, the dolls are stored away.

[Withay]

One thing that I am noticing is that so many people have their bedroom doors open, or so it seems, all night. I was taught, by the fire department, that you really should close all doors in the house at night for fire safety. If there is a fire, say in the kitchen there is nothing to slow the spread of smoke or fire into the bedrooms with the doors open.

I will never forget the image of the family who had their bedroom doors open at night and had a fire in their home. The mother was found leaned over the babys' crib where she was overcome by smoke. Everyone in the family perished due to smoke inhalation.

Sorry to introduce such a damper into the thread, but I would be remise if I didn't remind people that closed bedroom doors are much safer and could save your/your childs' life.

I use baby monitors in every room so I can still hear the kids when all the doors are closed. I don't care if my son gets to be schoolage and has a monitor in his room. If it keeps him alive, so be it.

Just something to think about.