Family safety is an important issue that requires planning and forethought.
With a little time and care, you can drastically improve the safety of your home, effectively protecting your family against intruders, disasters, emergencies, and other unexpected possibilities, while making your home and neighborhood safer for your loved ones.
Here are some suggestions and guidelines to get you started in the process of safeguarding your family and home.
The first step is setting up your house as safely as possible for your children.
With babies and toddlers, you need to completely childproof your house.
This includes putting gates to block stairways, installing catches on the cupboards so that curious toddlers can't open them, padding sharp corners, covering electric outlets, protecting wires to telephones or computers, and moving dangerous objects out of reach.
These are all precautions you need to take to prevent your children from harming themselves in your home.
The next step is to work on protecting your children from being harmed by outside forces.
The nighttime is when shadows and monsters creep into kids' imaginations, and it is up to you to dispel these fears.
While the monsters under the bed aren't a real threat, dangers from the outside world are real.
Lay your children's fears to rest, but also be sure to take their protection seriously.
At night, draw all the shades, especially those in your kids' bedrooms.
Bring in toys from the yard - in the evening it is easy to discard bikes, rollerblades, and basketballs in the front driveway, but it is essential to remember to bring them inside and lock up the garage.
As with all areas of home security, one of the most important things is just to keep open communication with your family.
Discuss plans and procedures in detail so that everyone is in agreement on what to do in an emergency.
One of the most important of these emergency plans is your fire plan.
Most of us are lucky enough to make it through life without a serious house fire, but that doesn't mean that every family shouldn't be prepared just in case.
An adequate fire plan will include an exit strategy from every room of the house, arranging a meeting place a safe distance away where everyone can regroup, and knowing the best actions to take in a fire - stay low, cover your mouth, test doorknobs before opening doors, etc.
The fire alarms in your home should be just one aspect of an overall home alarm system.
Motion detectors and burglar alarms are a system of warning and protection for you, and a deterrent to intruders.
At their most basic level, these alarms give you the assurance that no disturbance will go unnoticed.
You can sleep soundly knowing you have a system that is always working to protect your family.
Alarms are the final step in creating a home that is safe from dangers within and without.
Use these suggestions to create a family safety plan that works for your family and your home.