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Subject Topic: toddler proofing bookshelves? Post ReplyPost New Topic
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monica
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Posted: Oct 29 2007 at 7:43am | IP Logged Quote monica
not sure what forum this should go under, please move it where it seems appropriate. i have a wonderful 1.5 yo boy who love to destroy my book shelves. he just plows through books looking for one with a pretty cover. i have tried packing the bookshelf so it is impossible to get a book out, but then when i need one out, it all comes undone. i dont really have room to move the shelf anywhere else. suggestions??
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julia s.
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Posted: Oct 29 2007 at 8:04am | IP Logged Quote julia s.
Monica,
I have this problem too. He's gotten a little better as he gets older and finds entertainment in other things (like pulling things of table tops and writing on the couch with a stray marker he found ). I gave him his own shelf and just redirected him when he did this. A lot of the time he did it when he was bored and didn't know a better way to tell me. Usually when I pointed to his books he would go get one and we'd read it. It's not foolproof though because he'd still tear through it when I was making meals or busy with the other kids.

Any other ideas would be great.



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Barbara C.
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Posted: Oct 29 2007 at 8:44am | IP Logged Quote Barbara C.
I'm really surprised that One Step Ahead or one of those places haven't devised some sort of screen or netting to put around bookcases. They have them for everything else!!

I've resorted to boxing up my lower shelf books (making sure my favorites are at the top of the case) until a kid grows out of it. I keep most of our shelves upstairs in the bedrooms, but we spend most of our time downstairs.

We've had a big problem with CD's; we have hundreds of CD's. I've tried blocking access with a recliner; then mine started standing in the chair and pulling ones off the higher shelves. A few months ago, I put some of our less favorite CD's in storage, and was able to clear two shelves to store toys and board books instead. We also have all of our adult DVD's split between my husband's office in the basement and a linen closet upstairs. It's not ideal, but it works.

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Stephanie_Q
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Posted: Oct 29 2007 at 5:49pm | IP Logged Quote Stephanie_Q
My solution was to move all the books to our own little "library" in a guest room closet. We keep the books we're reading in a barrister bookcase in the living room and/or in our library book bags hanging on door handles and bed posts. Our barrister is an antique, but there are relatively inexpensive versions of them like this one
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happymama
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Posted: Oct 29 2007 at 10:09pm | IP Logged Quote happymama
i did the exact same as Julia - boxed up the lower shelves and put the books in storage until the monkey grows out of it. I keep the top shelves full of "my" books. I also put all the board books on a bookshelf in the kids room and am teaching him that those are "his" books as opposed to "mommy's" books.

I was so happy when my oldest child grew out of that phase... just in time for #2 to start doing it... who quit just in time for #3 to start doing it...
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LLMom
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Posted: Oct 30 2007 at 9:50am | IP Logged Quote LLMom
This is ugly but we put old tennis nets on some (dh teaches tennis) and then bought this green plastic fencing (looks like chicken wire) and covered all of the book cases. As I said it is ugly but it keeps me sane!

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teachingmom
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Posted: Oct 30 2007 at 5:45pm | IP Logged Quote teachingmom
We have three bookshelves on the main floor of our house. One is very tall, with mostly homeschooling books. I cleared the bottom two shelves of books and keep wooden puzzles and such there. So that shelf is not a problem with my 1yo.

The second shelf has mostly "junky" paperbacks on the bottom shelves. These are the easy reader type books that I don't worry about keeping nice. We usually have many of these books strewn across our family room floor at any given time, but I don't mind.

The third shelf has good books. And it's short -- only two shelves that can both be easily reached by a 1yo. When my dd learned to crawl and then walk a few months back, we had a real problem with her pulling those books off the shelf regularly. I had just been given a hand-me-down baby gate to use at our vacation rental home. We already have ways of gating off the stairs at home, so I really didn't need the gate after vacation. It's a gate like this.

One day, after putting some of our good books back on the shelf for the umpteenth time, I realized that I could use the gate to protect the shelves from the baby. It does not look nice at all! But it does the trick. I prop the gate up against the shelf, tucking it a bit behind the end of the sofa nearby, and put a heavy basket filled with library books in front of it. It has been working great. For some reason dd doesn't go for the library books sitting in the basket. Go figure!

If you don't have an extra baby gate around, maybe you could request one from your local freecycle group.

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