At what age do children no longer need childproofing products?
I get the question of, "at what age can I uninstall all of these devices; at what age am I free of all these baby gates, locks, and latches?" And quite frankly, that's a hard question to answer. I think that by the time a child is grown and a mother is considering these questions, she needs to really make that decision for herself. I have a five year old and a three year old and I still have locked cabinets. I have chemicals which I just don't want them to ever have access to. So I will always have magnetic locks on my cabints with chemical. Some people have bars in their homes with different types of alcohol in it. I mean, my goodness, you could argue that cabinet to be locked well into the teen years to keep your kids out of it. So, my sister, for example, she removed the padding off of her hearth because it just looked ugly--it had been there through four children I might add--and she removed it. That very next day, her four year old daughter fell and hit her forehead on the hearth. So I would leave it installed as long as possible. Regarding baby safety gates, if your children are able to walk and they're able to walk confidently, and--picture this moment, if your child is walking up the stairs and they hear daddy walk in the front door or a dog bark and they don't pivot and turn and then lose their balance and fall, then that would be the time, after that time would be the time to uninstall that baby gate. Your child needs to be sure-footed and needs to be able to make decisions like not pivoting right in the middle of the stairs to be able to uninstall those baby gates.
