Babyproofing Christmas with Infants and Toddlers

Now that your little one has arrived and with the holidays approaching, are you worried about how to best decorate while keeping your baby safe? As parents, you’ll still want to bring the seasonal joy into your home. But many parents are worried about their little ones moving, pulling, grabbing, breaking the decorations, and getting hurt. There are a few ways that you can still bring decorations and seasonal joy into your home with less worry about baby getting hurt. Christmas with toddlers and infants requires a little special babyproofing.

Making Memories with Your Little One

So much about the holidays is making memories together. Your infants and toddlers won’t remember the decorations or even the presents. Your preschool child will barely remember these unless they are a tradition or make a truly memorable experience. However, they will remember the love, the happiness and cheer that you share during this time.

Does this mean you shouldn’t decorate? Absolutely not! If your holiday decorations bring you joy that you can share with your little one, find a way to display them safely. However, if you have always just done things a certain way and aren’t really find the enjoyment in them, then make a change. It’s okay. Find a new way to decorate for the holidays that does bring you joy and happiness that you can share with your baby. This will help you make traditions your children will love and hopefully pass on with love to your grandchildren.

Christmas Music for Infants and Toddlers

Music is a great way to bring the seasonal joy into your home. With technology today, there are so many different ways to play seasonal music. Plus, you can even play seasonal music from other countries and in other languages. What a great way to expose your little one to new cultures and languages.

Music adds to the ambience of the holidays without adding dangers for your child. Fill your house with your favorite holiday music. Discover a few new children’s holiday tunes to share too. Dance, spin, and celebrate with your little one to create those feelings of happiness and love that they will remember.

The Infant and Toddler Christmas Tree

You can also definitely still have a tree, but don’t feel obligated to put one up baby’s first few years. If you enjoy a well decorated Christmas tree, then definitely put yours up. But if it feels like just one more thing you have to do, it’s okay to take pictures by the store display trees this year. With your baby being so little, you have so much going on that you don’t need any added stress.

Baby Proofing Your Christmas Tree

However, if you are anything like me, and putting up the tree actually brings some good spirit, then by all means, go for it. Easy tips for parents are to get a smaller tree that can be put up a little higher so baby cannot reach it. Place the tree up on a table or counter out of your little one’s reach. This gets you the beauty and holiday cheer of the tree, while keeping the area safe for your baby.

If you wish to have a larger tree, use baby gates around your tree to keep your little one away until you are ready to let him explore. You can gate all the way around your tree if you have enough. Another approach is to strategically place your tree. If you find yourself needing more baby gates, move your tree into a corner so that you can surround it with fewer gates. This method has the added bonus of protecting the presents from your little one too!

You can also hang your ornaments in such a way that the more fragile ones are higher where your little one cannot reach and ones that are more durable lower that are okay for your little one to hold and put in their mouth. Be sure to be careful with lights and children who like to put things in their mouth. We definitely don’t want our little ones chewing on the Christmas lights.

Alternative Christmas Trees

For a safer toddler option, you can make a felt tree to decorate with felt pieces that you little one can enjoy with you. You can cut out a large tree shape from green felt or cut out 4 progressively larger green felt triangles to make your tree shape. Then add on a brown felt tree stem. Now comes the fun of making all your colorful felt decorations. If you little one is old enough, they can help put the felt ornaments on the tree too.

Another option is to make a Christmas tree window cling. We love to use clear contact paper and tissue paper to make our tree shape. For this, I would definitely recommend making the tree using 4 progressively larger clear contact paper triangles. Let your toddler add the tissue paper to the contact paper. You can add large sheets of green tissue paper or tear the green tissue paper and add the smaller pieces. We use double sided tape to affix to our larger windows.

Then decorate with any paper or tissue paper ornaments you wish to create. We love to use the clear contact paper to make the ornaments more durable, especially for little ones who still put things in their mouth.

Stockings

Lots of adults see stockings as safe for babies since they are off the ground. However, they forget that they are generally near a wall or fireplace and hang down low. If you plan to have stockings, be sure to hang them up in such a way that baby doesn’t pull on them to stand up. Either hang them up higher where the entire stocking is out of your little one’s reach or place a gate around them to keep your little one back.

If your little one is really interested in stockings, you can always get one that she can play with that is not hung. You may want to make the play stocking a little different from your other stockings. This way you can quickly know that it is the one you bought for play. The last thing you want is for your child to get ahold of a stocking that you hung, especially if it has items inside, and you didn’t realize it.

Decorating Around the House

For other decorations, be sure to place anything that your little one shouldn’t handle up high. These can be more fragile or special decorations, but they can also be decorations that are a little more dangerous too. Anything with small pieces, sharp edges, or easily breakable should be kept out of your little one’s reach.

Any decorations that are safe for your little one, be sure to let them explore with you. This is a great sensory option for your little one and lets them experience something new too! So many of the ornaments and decorations that we use around the holidays have new textures for your baby to explore. Just be sure these are clean if you child still puts items in his mouth.

Be sure to make some decorations with your little one too! We love to make handprint ornaments together and decorate some felt ornaments for our tree. For my younger children, we love to buy stickers or foam stickers that they can decorate ornaments or their handprints. For older children, or young children with supervision, markers and paint are always fun too!

Candles

Candles are a wonderful way to add to your seasonal joy too! We love to have a few candles around the house throughout the season. The wonderful scents bring us joy and the dim lights are always nice on a quiet evening.

Be sure these are out of reach of your children and only lit when you are nearby. Children find the most wonderful ways to reach things that we think are out of reach. This is especially true for climbing toddlers who manage to get onto tables and counters with the help of chairs or stools.

You can also buy battery operated or solar powered candles instead for more safe options for your little ones. Diffusers can add a wonderful scent to your home without the fire of a candle as well. Explore the options that work best for you!

Food

Be sure to check any food decorations too! Little ones love to put things in their mouths. So if you hang candy canes on your tree, make garland from popcorn, or other fun food decorations, make sure these are out of reach of your little one or safe to be eaten. If you reuse any special food decorations from year to year, be careful placing these were your baby can reach.

Additionally, be sure the decorations are food you don’t mind your little one eating. Foods that are pretty for decorations are often not foods we want our little one to eat. They may have lots of added sugar or dyes, they may be treated so they aren’t safe to eat, or they may be choking hazards. If your baby can reach it, they will try to eat it!

Wrapping Paper as Decoration

Another wonderful option for decorating when you have little ones is wrapping paper. Wrapping paper isn’t just for presents. You can use wrapping paper like wall paper, mats on the floor, or even create ornaments out of wrapping paper together. We have even made pretend tree lights with wrapping paper.

The best part is that these decorations are safe for your little one to explore as well as festive. This is a great way to use up those extra scraps of paper. Additionally, they add an auditory component along with the tactile sensations to the ornaments. So many little ones love to explore the noises that wrapping paper can make. Combine that with the different textures and the ability to tear the paper, you’ve got yourself a win-win.

A Tip for Opening Presents

In the beginning, when your children are small, presents are definitely more for the parents. We spend time wrapping and decorating. Then we encourage our baby to help us open the presents only to move onto the next present. Almost like it’s a race to get through opening all the presents as quick as we can.

When you little one gets a bit older and can start to open presents on their own, they want to immediately play with everything. After opening a present, they immediately demand to have the box opened so they can play. Yet, as parents, we want them to open the next gift, get through the pile. This constant rush takes away some of the joy of Christmas presents.

So instead of rushing through opening to get to the play, take a moment before you wrap the gifts. Take everything out of the packaging and boxes. Then wrap just the gift in a ready to play form. If a gift has multiple pieces, you can either wrap each piece separately or together. If you are worried about pieces getting lost, tape the pieces to the wrapping paper or place in an easy to open unsealed box. Think a box that pops open once it’s unwrapped.

Whether you have an infant or a toddler, this little change makes a big difference. Your infant will learn that unwrapping leads to something fun, something they want to play with instead of another box. Meanwhile, your toddler will get the chance to immediately play with what they found. No need to demand parents open the gift and wait not so patiently while you struggle with the tape and packaging.

We’d Love to Connect with You

And now that you’ve got Christmas covered, be sure to check out our post on Storing Christmas for tips to packing everything away. Don’t miss our tips for Kid-friendly New Year’s Celebrations. We would appreciate if you could leave us a comment and let us know which tip resonated most with you. Looking for more family friendly solutions to real life problems? Take a moment and subscribe to our newsletter.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.