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Hot ovens can burn your child
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The picture on the right shows a typical kitchen scene. For some reason, toddlers love to play with the doors of ovens, dishwashers and dryers when they are open.
Here's the problem that you need to be aware of. Imagine that you have been baking a turkey in the oven. You open the oven door to get the turkey out, and leave it open as you extract the roasting pan. Your toddler comes over to play with the oven door, but now the temperature of the door is 350 degrees F. Your toddler can be seriously burned by this innocent mistake.
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Steps you can take
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- Whenever you are opening a hot oven door for any reason, your toddlers and small children should be nowhere near the kitchen. When you are cooking, children should be excluded from the kitchen with child gates, placed in another room or placed in a playpen. The oven door is one hazard, but imagine other simple tasks like removing a pot of boiling pasta from the stove so that you can drain it in the kitchen sink. If kids (or pets) are playing on the kitchen floor and you trip, you will seriously burn yourself and your kids. You do not want to dump boiling liquid on your kids if you spill. You do not want your children touching the hot oven door. Children do not belong in the kitchen when you are cooking.
- In general, discourage all children from playing around the oven.
- See also the article on stoves.
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Additional Resources
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