Home Safety – Poisoning

NAME: Lily
Status: Waiting for cicadas to go back underground
Glee: Bonus $10 in jeans pocket
Peeve: Beady little red eyes

While I may whine about the occasional dateless Saturday night or boyfriend-less dinner party, the reality is, as a single woman I kind of have it made. And all it takes to make me appreciate this anew is spending time with a friend who has a toddler.

Toddlers have their own version of an eating disorder, in that they put EVERYTHING in their mouths. My friend C. said she has to treat her house like a fatal obstacle course, since, when it comes to having pint-sized people around, that’s kind of what it is. Her little guy is upright and on the move, and although he seems impervious, bouncing back from crazy injuries with just a few minutes of crying and a kiss on the boo-boo (Incidentally, I think we should still have someone as adults who can kiss the boo-boo and make it go away. Sigh.), there’s no end to imminent danger.

Coffee table corners can put an eye out. Kitchen chairs can cause a head injury. I shudder to think of the kid alone on a staircase, when ends in a glossy brick foyer below. Then there are the household cleaners and insecticides and such. Of course, in a way, all those are kind of obvious. You know, put the stuff on a high shelf, gate off the stairs and either pad the table corners or put it in storage for a few years.

But then there’s the less obvious stuff. To a kid, moth balls, tiny batteries and dishwasher gel packs all look like highly desirable candy. Yet all that stuff is poisonous. And there’s crazy stuff like, if a kid drinks mouthwash or swallows someone’s blood pressure pill or has a tiny sip of alcohol – it can all end badly.

So after my visit with C. and her adorable son, I come home chock full of info for my sister, Rose. She, of course, knows all of it (was there ever any doubt?). But as we’re sitting there talking about making the house safe for little tater, we hear a huge crash and a stream of curse words from the other room. We both run to see what’s happened, and there’s my dear brother-in-law, standing and cussing in the middle of a pile of busted glass that used to be the front the doors of the china cabinet, which he was thrown against when his screw driver hit something it shouldn’t in the wall socket on the opposite wall. He got quite a shock. As did the china cabinet.

Looks like we might have to make the house safer for big tater as well.

Q: What are the most common and most dangerous poisons in the home?

Find the answer to this and other home poison safety frequently asked questions.

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