The Proof is in the Plastic

At nearly 1 year old and now mobile (albeit by bum shuffling), Millie is well and truly at that stage where she is into everything! And unlike Callum who was pretty good really, she really is into everything!

With Callum, we decided not to take the ‘baby-proofing’ approach as we wanted to teach him, however frustrating it is repeating no & distracting them, there are things he isn’t allowed to touch. Thus making it a lot easier (in theory) when visiting houses where there are no children living and no child proofing has taken place.

For Callum, this approach worked so we are hoping to adopt the same approach with Millie too. Though I am sure it wont work for every child and Millie is infinitely more curious and persistent than Callum ever was. Quite frankly, Callum was rather lazy – I hear this is common for boys but I’ll make no comment aloud. This probably made our job much more easier.

One of the best bits of advice I got, which was from my sister, is to allocate a ‘child friendly’ kitchen cupboard, such as the evil tupperware cupboard, which your child is allowed to go in, pull everything out & explore. Thus distracting them from all the cupboards they aren’t allowed to enter.

The added bonus about this being the tupperware cupboard is that, if it is anything like mine, it is always collapsing and falling out of the cupboard anyway as piles upon piles of plastic tries to kill you. It is eternally messy! You tidy it and when the cupboard door is closed it comes alive & jumbles itself up again. So, with your child in absolute glee pulling out plastic cups, plates, bowls & take away cartons (*cough*) galore, you either don’t care about just picking it all up and throwing it back in again if short on time or it gets a daily tidy as you neatly stack it all back in again!

(Yes, rather embarrassingly, that really is my tupperware cupboard!)

So far, this tip appears to be working with Millie too. However, Millie’s refusal to go down the stairs backwards may mean we abolish the no stairgate theory!