The years of living dangerously

It's a quirk of language that when you bulletproof, waterproof, or fireproof, you make something safe from bullets, water, or fire, but when you childproof, the idea is to make your house safe for your children. Safety is a relative term, though. Some homes pose more hazards than others. Some toddlers do, too. Is it possible to keep our children 100 percent safe? Is it even a good idea?

With the growth in recent years of the childproofing industry - there are dozens of safety products to choose from as well as a growing cadre of professionals you can hire to install them - come two new worries. The first is that too much paraphernalia can give parents a false sense of security.

''They think, 'Oh, I've child-proofed that room,' and ease up on supervision,'' says child-injury prevention specialist Mark Brandenburg, an emergency room physician at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla.

The second is that there can be too much of a good thing: Overprotection underexposes a toddler to healthy risk.

''They need opportunities to evaluate for themselves: 'Is this safe?''' says developmental psychologist Maureen O'Brien. ''Children become less safe if they have no internal discipline, and internal discipline comes from experience and consequences.''

Don't misunderstand; childproofing is a must. Between 1999 and 2000, the most recent years for which figures are available, 2 million US children under age 6 required emergency room treatment because of accidents at home, according to the nonprofit National Safe Kids Campaign.

The trick for parents is to create an environment that balances risk, employing some of the products that are available but still having reason to say ''No!" so that your child develops the impulse control to know when to say it to himself.

When O'Brien's twins were toddlers, she stored plasticware in a kitchen cabinet that didn't have a child safe-latch. When the twins weren't playing with the containers, they used the door for Peek-A-Boo or hid inside the cabinet.

Whoa! Talk about dangerous! Didn't fingers get caught? Didn't children get stuck inside?

''Yes and yes," says O'Brien. ''It's how they learned to close the door more carefully. They also were never in the kitchen without supervision because the kitchen was gated. . . . If I needed to rescue them, I could, but mostly they figured it out themselves. Problem-solving is a developmental task. They can't learn how to do it if they never have the chance." O'Brien is co-author of ''Watch Me Grow, I'm One-Two-Three" (Quill Press) and director of parenting for The First Years (thefirstyears.com), a manufacturer of baby safety products.

No two homes will have the same childproofing because of differences in:

The physical environment. Some homes pose more challenges than others due to design or age. Contemporary homes with open spaces, for instance, make it harder to gate rooms, stairways, or stairwells. Kidco.com offers a selection of gates with extensions that can be configured to block almost anything, from exercise machines to radiators.

Children's temperament. Albert Sughrue of Winchester is almost 4. As a beginning walker, he was so cautious that his parents, Paula and Paul, didn't worry he'd get hurt on the edges of the coffee table. His sister, Madeline, 2, is a different story. ''She's an aggressive early walker," says Paula. ''The table is out of the room." Albert was never tempted to play with the refrigerator door; Madeline has already ripped off the Velcro appliance belt designed to keep it shut.

Parents' temperament. The Sughrues' style was to do some basics (locking windows, installing electrical-outlet covers, rearranging furniture to block the hearth), and then re-evaluate with each child, a process they're about to do again with their third, Philip, who is 1. Their neighbors, Kelly and Rob Dietel, on the other hand, bought peace of mind by childproofing before Charlie, now 3, was even crawling. Did that lead them to overbuy? A bit. ''We never installed the toilet seat latch. We keep the bathroom door closed instead," Kelly says. Foam doorstops to keep doors from slamming on his fingers also turned out to be unnecessary.

No matter what, safety is not a one-shot deal; it changes with each stage of development, says Brandenburg, author of ''Child Safe, A practical guide for preventing childhood injuries" (Three Rivers). His website is babyandchildsafety.com. He's seen injuries result from parents' not recognizing a child's new abilities, or not realizing she's outgrown a piece of equipment.

Take bathtub seats. ''At some point, a child can climb out," says O'Brien. ''That's when teaching counts: 'The rule is, 'No climbing in the bathtub.' " Speaking of tub seats, manufacturers are taking the kind with suction cups off the market Jan. 1 and replacing them with seats that clamp onto the sides of the tub.

When you start to babyproof, child development specialist Kimbell DiCero recommends crawling through the house to get your baby's eye view. Take an empty toilet paper roll with you. Consider anything that fits into it a choking hazard, and be especially alert for containers -- think mom's purse -- whose small items might fall on the floor or be pulled out. DiCero leads workshops at Isis Maternity in Brookline.

Stairs are the No. 1 source of childhood injury, says Steve Weinstein, president of the International Association for Child Safety Inc., (iafcs.org), an organization for childproofing professionals.

''Parents tend to think they only need gates at the top, but babies crawl halfway up and then decide to turn around," he says. He recommends only hardware-mounted gates at the top of the stairs; anything else can be dislodged. His favorite is the Stairway Special by Cardinalgates.com.

Two items that have the most potential for saving a life often aren't even on parents' radar screens for childproofing, says Ken Giles, a spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. (The commission's free brochure on childproofing can be downloaded at cpsc.gov; click on publications, then search by topic.)

Smoke alarms. New federal recommendations call for them on every floor and inside every bedroom. ''Little kids tend to sleep through them," Giles says. ''The closer everyone in the family is to an alarm, the better."

Window-treatment-cord kits. Ten to 20 children a year are stangled by drapery, blinds, and shade cords, says Giles. Keep furniture away from windows where toddlers can climb and reach cords; cut cord loops; and secure dangling cords.

Also high on professionals' lists:

Drowning prevention. ''It's your attention more than any device that matters," says Giles, although he does recommend doorknob covers or hook-and-eye latches high up on doors to bathrooms. Of course, they're only helpful if you're diligent about using them. You're washing the car? Empty your bucket of water. Have a pool or hot tub? Go for layers of protection: Not just a fence, but an alarm on the gate.

Window guards. Each year, a few children die falling out a window. DiCero recommends guards even on the first floor, and only ones that screw into the frame. She once had a landlord who objected to that. ''I asked if her homeowner insurance covered children falling out the window," she says.

Safety isn't only about equipment. Even though Gaynor Kohn of Inside Out Childproofing Inc. of Methuen (insideoutsafeenvironments.com) makes her living selling and installing products, she says that with all the electronic and exercise equipment in homes today, parents' common sense counts more than ever: shutting and latching doors to the office or exercise room; putting computers, VCRs, and wastebaskets up high or behind latched cabinets; bundling wires into a figure eight and securing them with twisters; moving, barricading, or mounting floor lamps and other tippy furniture to the wall so toddlers can't cause them to topple while trying to pull themselves up.

Whether you buy five gadgets or 40, whether you hire a professional or do it yourself, developmentalists like O'Brien caution against doing so much that you infringe on a child's need to explore and interact with the environment. Kelly Dietel worried how she would manage that now that 3-year-old Charlie is more independent but his 8-month-old brother, Andy, is starting to crawl. It's been easier than she expected.

''I told Charlie what makes toys safe for Andy. He grabbed on to it right away," she says. ''He'll come to me and say, 'Mommy, it's not sharp, it's not dirty, it's not small. It's OK for Andy."

Contact Barbara Meltz at meltz@globe.com