A good share of our consultations are not for the home where the baby lives. They are for the grandparents’ house: the place the baby goes two days a week while the parents work, naps on Sunday afternoons, or stays for a month while the family is between homes. Sometimes the grandparents call us. Sometimes the parents do. Either way the question is the same: how much of this house actually needs to be made safe?
Less than the home where the baby lives. More than most grandparents think. Here is how we decide.
The Threshold: Is the Grandparent Childcare?
The honest dividing line is whether the grandparent is watching the baby without a parent present. If the answer is yes, the baby will nap there, play there, and be chased around the house by someone who is not a professional chaser. That home needs to be made safe in the same way a home where the baby lives does, scaled to the time the baby actually spends there.
If the answer is no, and the baby only visits with parents in tow, the list is shorter. If the family is living with the grandparents for a stretch, the list is the full one, because for those months it is the home where the baby lives.
The Short List
Every house is different, but the visit-only list almost always comes down to four things.
Gates at the top and bottom of the stairs the baby will be near. In a grandparent’s home we recommend retractable gates. They are there when the baby is, and they disappear into the wall when the baby is not, which is most of the time. A grandparent who watches a baby two afternoons a week should not have to live with a swinging stairway gate the other five days.
Latches where the poisons, breakables, and dangerous items are. Not every cabinet. The ones that hold cleaning products, medications, the good china, and the knives.
Furniture anchored to the wall. This one is not for the visit; it is permanent, and it is as much for the grandparents as for the baby. More on that below.
The television secured. Televisions are the single most common object in a fatal tip-over, and the one in the grandparents’ den has often been sitting unsecured on a stand for a decade.
After that, we address any serious hazard specific to the house. A pool gets treated as a pool: door solutions on every route to it, no exceptions. Beyond that, the rule we apply everywhere applies doubly here: it is easier to add than to subtract. Grandparents can always add more baby proofing later. They rarely need to.
What Grandparents Get Wrong
Grandparents raised their children in a different era, and most have not seen what baby proofing has become. The products are better, quieter, and less ugly than they were thirty years ago, and grandparents are usually surprised by how little they notice them once installed.
The other thing we hear is some version of “my kids turned out fine.” They did, and the baby will also probably be fine, but babies today are safer than children have ever been, and that did not happen by accident. It happened because parents and grandparents stopped relying on luck for the things a latch or an anchor handles for free.
Medications
We flag medications in every grandparent’s home, because there tend to be more of them, and more of them are the kind that matter. That said, we are not absolutists. If the medications live in the primary bedroom and the baby is never in the primary bedroom, we are more relaxed about it than we would be in the baby’s own home. If they live in a kitchen drawer at toddler height, they move or the drawer gets a latch. This is one of the conversations we have gently, and one grandparents have always been glad we had.
Furniture Anchoring is for Grandparents Too
We anchor furniture in any home the baby visits, and always if the baby sleeps there. Grandparents sometimes hesitate because they do not want holes in the walls or hardware on furniture they have owned for forty years. Two answers to that.
First, done properly, anchoring does not damage anything. We attach to a stud with the right fastener, the hardware is small, and it can be removed with no visible trace. In practice, nobody ever asks us to remove it.
Second, the anchor is not only for the baby. Tip-over injuries to older adults are now a category the CPSC tracks on its own, because a dresser or bookcase that goes over on a person of any age is a serious injury. Anchoring the furniture in a grandparent’s home is one of the few baby proofing measures that keeps protecting the household after the grandchildren are grown.
Who Decides, and Who Pays
In our experience the grandparents pay, and the parents send a list. We sort that list into what has to happen and what would be nice, the grandparents get the must-haves done, and everyone agrees to see whether the nice-to-haves are ever needed. They usually are not.
In Person or Virtual
We have done many Virtual Safety Sessions for grandparents, and they work well. But if the grandparents are in the DC area, we recommend the in-home consultation and installation without reservation. Grandparents want less to deal with than parents do, not more. They do not want to manage the installation, the parts, and the incidentals, and cost is usually a smaller factor for them than time and hassle. We arrive, we install, and they are done.
Beyond Grandparents
The same logic applies to any home the baby spends time in without living there: a second home, a vacation rental, a nanny’s house. Rentals have their own rules about what can be attached to what, and we have covered them in our post on baby proofing a rental. The threshold question is the same everywhere. How much time will the baby spend here, and who will be watching?
For what it is worth, we love working with grandparents. They ask good questions, they take the answers seriously, and they are without exception a pleasure to have as clients.
Booking a Consultation
Grandparents in Washington, DC, suburban Maryland, and Northern Virginia can schedule an in-home consultation. Grandparents everywhere can book a Virtual Safety Session. Parents are welcome to book on their behalf. If you want to talk it through first, book an inquiry call. To see how the consultation itself works, read what actually happens in a baby proofing consultation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do grandparents need to baby proof if the parents are always there during visits?
Very little. Gates on the stairs and anchored furniture cover most of it. The full list applies when the grandparent is watching the baby alone.
Will baby proofing damage the grandparents’ furniture or walls?
Not when it is installed properly. Anchors go into studs with the correct fastener, the hardware is small, and it can be removed without a trace. Retractable gates mount to the wall or post and roll out of sight when not in use.
Can the parents book the consultation for the grandparents’ home?
Yes. Parents book on behalf of grandparents regularly. We only need someone at the home for the consultation and installation.