I need some advice. DS is 17 months and is *this* close to figuring out how to open the child safety cabinet locks. He's already figured out how to open the front door child safety lock (on the third try). Any one else have this issue and how did you keep the chemicals under the sink from a curious, crafty toddler? I watch him a lot and I've started talking to him about how things under the sink are dangerous and one of the few no-no's in the house. He loves going to the forbidden cabinet and signing to me that it's a no-no area and dangerous *facepalm*. Ideas?

Chemicals high in a closet...give up on under the sink...

Move the chemicals to an upper cabinet with a keyed lock. Or to a closet with a good lock way up high, higher than he can reach standing on a chair, and put an inexpensive alarm on it. Or hang jingle bells on the insides of cabinet doors.

We used those Tot Lock magnetic cabinet locks that you need to use a magnet key to open them. They worked very well because you can't open the cabinet at all, not even to get your finger in, without the key. Kids tend to give up more quickly with them. Just make sure you have an extra one of the magnets in case you accidentally lose one.

We had mag locks, but honestly the whole time mine were in that stage I cut the chemicals down to vinegar, individully wrapped dishwasher pods kept at ceiling height and a thing of bleach kept in the garage. Medications were in a locked box, which my kids never even knew existed. It just wasn't worth it to me.

We don't use child locks in general. Both my boys were very verbal early on, so we started with "danger" for plugs, the gas stove, and places where little children shouldn't be. We do have some plug covers in the bedrooms, but not all over the house.

Generally, I've found that rules, even for one-year-olds, work better than locks. Ours have never been allowed to rummage through cabinets in the kitchen, so the under-the-sink stash is a non-issue.

Great insight, thank you! DianaG, he knows the rules but sometimes he's still acts like a 17 month old and pushes the rules. We keep all but 3 cabinets open for him to explore. He already figured out how to unplug the outlet covers and tried plugging prongs into them, so we just had to teach him to plug things in safely and since it's not a no-no he's lost interest rather quickly. We've tried 3 types of outlet covers and safety outlets to no avail. We watch him like a hawk. The MagLocks are a great idea. Talked to DH about this tonight, since DS can now open the "child-proof" lock on the trash cabinet. When I showed him this thread, he's dedicating this week to moving everything to the ceiling-hung storage in the garage. We are also going to put bells on the garage-side of the door to the attached garage (love that idea NotherBen). Medications haven't been a problem since we have so few and keep them locked above the toilet (I'm a pediatric nurse and see accidental ingestions FAR too often). Thank you and keep the ideas coming if there are others!

Give him some of his own tricky little boxes with compartments and lock and key sets and other fun things for fiddly fingers - and whenever he's working on something he shouldn't be, refer him to his own instead

We have an ugly but good lock under the sink, primarily for keeping the cats out now. It hooks over the two knobs and requires dexterity to operate. You push the center and side buttons simultaneously and slide the zipper part out to loosen, then lift the loop over the knob. So, it's two handed and requires coordination with strength.

We also used the magnet locks. We had enough of them installed that we have a fair number of the magnets, which we keep up high.

We never child-proofed for the human children, but rather because one cat kept getting into drawers, cabinets, etc. The magnetic locks solved the cabinet problem. One cat kept getting in there, letting the other cat in the cabinets, then closing the cabinet door - the other stupid cat couldn't figure out how to get back out.

We installed some sort of plastic hook thing on the drawers, but the cat figured out how to open the child-proof drawer hook. The drawer child-proof item must be meant for human children, not feline children. I guess we didn't read the fine print.

NSG, I think our cats are related Ours will also chew through plastic and cardboard to get what she wants, and can get out of any collar. We must need to start a gifted cats forum
/jack

Our kids think childproof locks are a joke. We have so many locks on the doors (we live on a busy corner) and they figured out how to just slide a chair up to the door and use the slide lock.
I moved anything dangerous up high. I have all sharp things in the kitchen in a canister up high as well. I have locked drawers for office supplies like stapler and scissors.
People come over and think my house is oddly empty, but they don't know what came before the oddly empty home.
People comments on "how does he know how to open that?!" and I'm thinking, "your kids don't do this?" My kids have asked people if they have any old engines they could have to use. My oldest keeps saying (He's 4), "All I want to do is figure out how everything works." It's true. Thankful for their curiosity, but exhausted.
Your child-proofing will continue for a while, just keeps evolving.

Our child was a "scaredy cat", and just showing him the labels that had the big "WARNING" on it and telling him it would KILL him was enough to make him decide on his own to leave the chemical world to mom and dad. We were very honest with him on what it would do to him.

However...

We also went with the mag lock system. We kept the key up where he couldn't get to it. See INSTRUCTIONAL Video.....(King's Hawaiian)

When my DS was little, I had a very good friend who didn't need to childproof, who didn't remove breakable items, who didn't have to worry about her child pulling up all the bricks in her handset patio…

She thought I was a bad parent because why else would my child be into EVERYTHING.

For the electric sockets don't use the plugs. You can buy replacement covers where the socket closes up when the cord is removed. You have to have a plug and push it sideways to put in. I still have them installed in many of my electric outlets and my son is 16. I just never bothered to remove them.

They seem to be called Mommy's Helper Safe-Plates.

When ds8 was little i did all that stuff. For ds6 i just used a thing to tie the handles of the cupboard the computer was in.

We put in new sockets (tamper resistant electric receptacles) in our house - it is a little hard to push a cord in, but even if a child sticks a screwdriver into one slot, the socket is not active. It requires contact in both slots to activate. This was recommended by an electrician to us when our son was a baby, who demo'ed the feature with one active TR socket. So we redid all child-accessible receptacles. I believe new housing are now required to have these, but I am not sure.

We have a baby gate at the top of the stairs with an alarm - so even though our kids can operate the gate now (DD finally got the strength to push and pull the handle at 2.5), we have left it in place for now because it does keep them from rolling down when they are wrestling and it also alerts us when someone is going up or down the stairs.

We did attempt to use some child proof locks around the house. Unfortunately, 1) we didn't really seem to need them with DS, 2) they also ended up being adult proof locks.

I realize my post is a little late...we use the locking ones where you have to push 2 buttons at once to open. We really only use them for the dangerous areas or when I just get tired of picking up all the game pieces for the last time lol. I also use hair elastics looped between 2 knobs if I am less concerned about the safety aspect, but we do keep a lot of things accessible for him to explore. Wish I could post a video because just the other day he came out with dh's electric razor turned on and was pretending to shave his face (his face only got ever so slightly red). And then another day I found a shriveled up radish in my purse lol. He is not quite as good as his sister was, but overall good...he just likes to explore a lot