This is a sponsored guest post.
Remember everything you did to baby-proof your house? You walked around the home looking for sharp edges and covering the electrical outlets. A decade or so later, it’s now time to teen-proof your home.
If you’ve currently got a tween-ager, now is the time to start thinking about the seemingly endless list of new dangers that await them when they enter high school and their brutal teen years.
No, you won’t be adding bars to the windows. But you can do these things.
1. Get Ready for Another Driver
We’re definitely seeing a generational shift when it comes to teen driving. A recent survey revealed that 71% of high school seniors have yet to get their driver’s license, which is easily the highest percentage we’ve seen in years.
However, when they do want their license, the demand will likely come quickly. It can come because they want a new job, or they simply now crave freedom. In either case, you need to prepare to add another driver to the household.
The first thing you need to do is add your teenager to your insurance policy to ensure they’re properly covered.
Next, do yourself a big favor and replace your garage door opener with a wi-fi enabled opener. This way, everyone in the family can simply use a mobile app to open the door, rather than leaving the remote in the car fulltime, which can be a security threat.
And finally, take care of all of that car maintenance you’ve been putting off to make sure it’s 100% safe for your teen.
2. Remove the Temptation
You will also want to lock away the dangers like guns, alcohol and prescription medications to get them out of harm’s way.
You may have all the trust in the world in your kids. However, when they get to high school, they make new friends and bring them into your home. These new friends pose a new threat.
Terrible things can happen when your teen wants to entertain or impress their new friends, particularly when you’re not home. So, take these risks out of the equation completely by locking them away.
3. Safeguard Web Access
Just because your kids are getting too old for restrictive measures like NetNanny, doesn’t mean they can’t be protected online.
Now is the time to have serious (and ongoing) conversations with your teen or soon-to-be-teen about the dangers online. These are dangers that you may not have grown up with. If you want to know how to initiate this conversation, there are a lot of resources at your disposal.
You need to make sure your child is aware that there are predators that prey on innocence. They will pose as would-be friends who share common interests and just want to connect.
You also need to talk to them about the dangers of being on either side of online bullying.
These are only a few of the things you can do to teen-proof your home. Of course, it’s also time to adapt your parenting methods and philosophy to meet the challenges that teens face today.
The teenage years seem to arrive in the blink of an eye. So, take care of these things today so you’re ready when the day arrives.
