If you have a little baby or toddler it’s a good idea to ‘toddler proof your Christmas tree’. I remember oh to well the days when my kids wanted to pull at the Christmas Tree, our first Christmas with the twins they were 10 months, they loved all the glitter and sparkles and just wanted to touch and if they got close enough I had the vision of them pulling a bauble and the tree falling on them.

I don’t have photo’s to show but we placed the Christmas Tree in the corner of the lounge room and put our lounge suite around it to prevent the babies from getting too close.  Read further for more great ideas.

Ideas on how to Baby & Toddler proof your Christmas Tree

• Tree inside a playpen
• Only decorate the top half of the tree
• Teach your child not to touch
• Build a small picket fence from pine
• Make a felt Christmas Tree with felt ornaments for your toddler to play with to deter them from the real thing
• Place fragile/special decorations up higher out of reach
• Use cheap decorations and no lights so it didn’t matter if they were broken until they learnt not to touch
• Put presents out on Christmas Eve
• Use a portable clothes drying rack folded into an ‘L’ shape to create the boundary then use material and cardboard to weave through the gaps
• Instead of putting a tree up use decorations/displays around the house. Eg. Baubles in vases
• Use a smaller tree and place on a table, box or upturned Port-a-Cot (make sure it is secure)
• Use a fireplace child proof guard
• Let the kids help decorate the tree; might make them less likely to destroy
• Christmas Tree wall sticker
• Decorate with non-breakable or non-interesting ornaments
• Hang bells on the tree that way you can hear if the toddler has gotten to the tree
• Put some child friendly toys near the tree
• Stick a paper tree to the wall
• Put up a small fibre optic tree out of reach
• On a trolley and secured tree to the wall
• Buy a tiny tree for their own bedroom, they get to decorate and play with it as much as they like
• Let them touch it, see what it feels like and after a while the novelty will wear off
• Bribe them with “If you break something Santa won’t come”
• Block off with a couch diagonal across a corner
• Place what they are terrified of around the tree
• Put the tree up on Christmas Eve after they have gone to bed
• Hang the tree upside down from the roof
• Put in a room that is off limits already to the child/ren
• ** For pets ** Place pepper, moth repellents or alfoil in the tree. Use a pine cone strategically placed that when the cat jumps on the pine cone falls off
• Just use tinsel and lights which made it look pretty without dangling ornaments
• Wind tinsel through the playpen bars; use plastic baby rings to hang the stocking from the playpen. Also have Christmas toys outside of the playpen and teach them they can touch what is on the outside but not what is on the inside.
• Place in a Port-a-Cot rather than a playpen
• Use bare fallen branches in large heavy pots full of rocks
• Just have a bare tree; no decorations
• If your tree has individual branches you attach only insert the top half
• Secure to the wall with fishing line or Zip ties
• Wrap some presents in front of the children and let them put them under the tree. They will not be excited about them as they will know most of them were boring. Leave the kiddies things hidden away for Santa.
• Suspend a large branch from the ceiling
• Weigh down your tree so they can’t pull it over on top of themselves
• Use a pet pen
• Don’t put up a tree at all

Use a felt tree like Johnny in a Dress

Put boxes around the tree similar to Grosgrain Fabulous

Do you have another idea on how to safely keep the Christmas tree out of the reach of young children?