How to Childproof Your Yard

The yard is where your family makes hundreds of memories. Whether you are chilling after a difficult day at work or your children are running around making a fuss (and having a great time of it), your yard should be a safe and happy place for your entire family.

As such, here are a few pointers on how to ensure that your yard is as safe as possible.

Make Sure to Avoid Diseases

While the chances of this are low, they exist. It is possible for your children to contract viruses while playing in the yard. Before you get started with childproofing your yard, let’s go through the basics.

The first thing that you need to do is to make sure that your grass is cut. This way, you can avoid illnesses such as Lyme disease. Its quite common, and celebrities have had to battle it. Ticks and numerous other insects are able to hide in tall grass, so cutting it and making sure it is always trimmed is a nice idea.

However, do not cut it too low. Grass can act as padding when your child falls. If your children are learning to walk, walking on gravel or hard surfaces is much more difficult than grass.

It is also important for you to regularly inspect your yard for ant nests, bees, and hornets. While they do not cause a disease, they can be a painful experience.

Lastly, it is important to avoid anything that can collect water, as that is essentially the birthplace of mosquitos. Whether you have a bucket lying around or a puddle that needs to be filled, take care of it as soon as possible.

Childproof Your Children

While the yard can naturally be a dangerous place for your children if unkept, your children can be dangerous for themselves too. Since you know better, here are a few things you can do to make sure that your children avoid potential hazards.

• Make sure to lock the shed. If you have a shed, chances are that it is full of tools such as axes, lawnmowers, and poisonous materials. The best way to prevent your children from using them is to not let them access your shed.
• Talk to your children and teach them the importance of safety. Even if your shed is always locked, make sure your children know the dangers of playing with sharp tools.
• Teach your children animal safety. Whether it is a pet or a random animal that has somehow wandered into your yard, make sure your children know how to be safe around animals.

Regularly Inspect For Hazards

Your yard is constantly changing. For example, it is possible for sticks to fall off plants and trees. Not only that, but it is also possible for rocks to be lying around but not catch your eye. This is because while smaller rocks may not be a hazard to you, they could easily trip your children as they carelessly run around the yard.

If you have stacks of woods lying around, make sure to check them for snakes and rodents. They love unattended piles of wood!

Apart from this, just look around your yard and see if anything stands out that could be dangerous. You should be able to see potential hazards if you look close enough.

Fence, Install it and Maintain it

Fencing your yard is always a good idea. It achieves two different purposes.

The first one is that it avoids animals from wandering into your yard. We already discussed teaching your children animal safety, but then again, it might just be better to prevent them from interacting with unfamiliar creatures.

A fence also makes sure that your children do not wander off. If you fence your yard and follow all of the other instructions that we mention, you will not be required to constantly monitor your children as they play in the yard.

This could allow you some ‘you’ time, maybe you could lounge in the yard yourself and read a good book? After all, you work really hard to maintain and childproof it!

Lastly, remember to maintain the fence. Regularly check for any cracks or broken panels. If you find them, replace them immediately.

A Few Extra Tips And Tricks

Before we end, here are a few useful tips and tricks that can help you childproof your yard effectively.

• Regularly check for poisonous plants. For obvious reasons, you should make sure there are none in your yard.
• Make sure any furniture that you have is padded. Lawn chairs can often have sharp edges sticking out, and do not get us started about how hazardous tables can be!
• Make sure that any play structures that you add are of a high quality and built to last. ‘Cheaping out’ on a swing is really not the way to go when the safety of your child is at stake.

Conclusion

Once you are done childproofing your yard, you are through the hard part. After that, all you need to do is to maintain it and perform regular checks to make sure that it stays childproof.

Thankfully, maintaining your yard is not a costly endeavor. As such, having a safe yard to enjoy with your family is one of the best ways to spend your time.