Babyproofing at 6 months: the month before crawling is the month for the drill

What a 6-month-old can actually do

Roll both ways, usually. Sit, with or without support. Reach and grab with accuracy, and bring whatever is grabbed to the mouth. Push up on straight arms and pivot on the belly. Not, usually, crawl, though the early ones start around now and rolling across a room is its own form of travel. So the baby's reach is wherever the baby is put: the changing table, the floor mat, the crib, your lap on the sofa. The hazards are within an arm's length of those places. The whole timeline is when to start babyproofing.

What applies today

The changing table strap, every time, and nothing on the table the baby can grab and swing. The crib away from the window and from every cord, per blind cord safety, with the CPSC's count of about nine cord strangulations a year under five in mind. No cords, blind pulls, monitor cables or lamp wires within reach of the crib or the play mat. The floor mat cleared of anything smaller than a toilet-paper tube. Hot drinks away from the lap. The water heater at 120 F, which is a thermostat and takes one minute.

The drilling jobs: do them this month

Everything that needs a stud finder, a drill and an hour of quiet. Anchor every dresser, bookcase, tall cabinet and TV stand, per how to anchor a dresser; strap or wall-mount the TV, per how to anchor a TV. Check every outlet for the TR mark and replace or cover the ones without it, per are outlet covers necessary. Mount the hardware gate at the top of the stairs, per how to install a baby gate. If a window has a low sill, the guard goes in now too. A crawler will find all of these within a week of starting; a 6-month-old will not notice you doing them.

Buy now, install at crawling

Cabinet locks, the bottom-of-stairs gate, doorway gates and corner guards can sit in the closet until the first crawl, but buying them now means they go on the same day, not a week later. The crawling stage is walked in babyproofing for a crawling baby; the whole-house list, in injury order, is the babyproofing checklist.

What to skip for now

Toilet locks, stove knob covers, oven locks and door knob covers are for a child who stands and reaches; a 6-month-old does not. Window stops on high sills can wait for pulling up. The pool needs its fence regardless of the child's age, but the in-pool alarm can wait until the child can get outside. Nothing else on the list waits.

The picks