The Parenting Journal

What a dishwasher’s lock light means, how to turn the control lock off brand by brand, and why it may not keep the door shut.

How to tell a microwave’s keypad lock from its newer child-resistant door, and the on and off steps Panasonic, GE, Samsung, Whirlpool and others publish.

Cords are quiet hazards. They don’t look dangerous hanging behind a lamp or trailing from a coffee maker, and that’s exactly why they catch parents off guard. My younger daughter proved this to me when she was about 14 months...

Nearly 1.4 million pediatric door-injury emergency department visits were recorded over a single decade in the U.S. (NEISS, 1999–2008). In my experience, this statistic hit home because my older daughter, at 22 months, got two fingers caught in the hinge...

Every mealtime is a small engineering problem. You’re strapping a squirming, food-covered child into a chair elevated off the floor, and you’re doing it three times a day, often while distracted. The margin for error is real. CPSC’s 2024 Nursery...

Every door in your house is a decision point. Some lead to safe spaces. Others open onto staircases, garages, cleaning supplies, and pools. The hardware on those doors is the only thing standing between your toddler and whatever is on...

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...

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...