The Parenting Journal

The call from the living room came three days after my younger daughter took her first independent steps. Not a cry, just silence. I found her standing at the open cabinet under the bathroom sink, holding a bottle of drain...

The laundry room is one of the most hazardous rooms in your home, and it rarely makes the top of the babyproofing list. In my experience, parents spend hours on nursery safety and cabinet locks in the kitchen, then leave...

Every year, about 3,300 children age 5 and younger are treated in U.S. emergency rooms for window fall injuries (CPSC). That number doesn’t include older kids, and it doesn’t include falls that ended worse. Windows in homes with young children...

Opening a baby registry can feel overwhelming: 400 items, zero context, and a due date closing in. The registry becomes a wish list. It should be a safety plan.Room by room is the approach: start with space, not brand or...

Every parent knows roughly when their child "should" be walking. The milestone charts are everywhere, on the pediatrician’s wall, in the baby apps, in the well-meaning questions from relatives. So when your child hits 14 months, then 16, then 17...

The home office is one of the most dangerous rooms in the house for a toddler, and most parents don’t realize it until something goes wrong. I learned this the hard way when my younger daughter, at around 18 months,...

Parents often focus on what’s on the floor before their baby starts crawling, then scramble to address it once a newly mobile baby is already halfway under the coffee table.The carpet-versus-tile question comes up constantly, and the honest answer is...

About 93,000 children under 5 are treated in U.S. emergency rooms each year for stair-related injuries, according to a Nationwide Children’s Hospital analysis of CPSC NEISS data. That’s roughly one child every six minutes. A baby gate is one of...

Most parents picture baby-proofing as something they’ll get to eventually, maybe after the first crawl. That’s the wrong order. By the time your baby is pulling across the floor toward the dog’s water bowl, you’ve already lost the window.The AAP...