She Can Reach the Bottom Three Feet, and That Is the Whole Problem

The tree went up on Saturday. By Sunday afternoon the bottom three feet of it were bare, and a very small person was walking through the kitchen with a glass robin held out in front of her like a trophy she had won.

Nobody tells you that a Christmas tree is not one object. To a toddler it is a climbing frame with snacks hanging off it.

That list is short on purpose. The long lists you find in December mostly protect the tree. This one protects the child.

What actually puts small children in the hospital in December

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission counts about 14,900 people treated in emergency rooms for holiday decorating injuries in a single season. That works out at roughly 160 a day through November and December.

Most of those are adults falling off ladders outside. The toddler version of the list is different and much shorter. It is the tree coming over, glass in a small hand, small parts in a small mouth, a drink of the water in the stand, and the flat silver battery inside a decoration that lights up or plays a tune. First December with a baby in the house? The calmer version of the whole month is in Christmas with a newborn.

Fire is the one everybody pictures, and it is the rarest. The National Fire Protection Association puts it at around 143 home fires a year that start with a Christmas tree. Rare, and far worse than an ordinary house fire when it does happen, which is why the water in the stand matters. A dry tree is the whole difference. So the risk you picture is not really the risk you have.

The anchor takes four minutes and hardly anyone does it

Buy a pack of small eye hooks and a roll of clear fishing line. Screw one hook into the wall behind the tree, a little above the halfway point. Tie the line from the hook to the trunk, then do the same on the other side if the tree is tall. You will not see it once the lights are on.

If you rent and cannot put a hook in the wall, tie it to a curtain rail bracket or a heavy piece of furniture that is itself against the wall. Anything that will not move when twenty five pounds of tree leans on it.

Then look at the stand. The wide ones with four splayed legs are far harder to tip than the narrow screw-in kind. If your stand came free with the tree ten years ago, this is the year to replace it. Fifteen dollars, and it removes the failure that the anchor is there to catch.

The bottom third of the tree belongs to her

You can fight for the bottom three feet all December, or you can hand it over on day one and get your evenings back. Handing it over works better, and it is not a compromise on how the tree looks.

Move everything breakable, everything sharp, everything with wire hooks and everything sentimental up above her shoulder line. Wire hooks are worse than the ornaments themselves, so swap them for loops of ribbon or yarn on anything hanging low. Then fill the space she can reach with felt shapes, wooden animals, paper stars, plastic baubles that bounce. A felt robin does the same job as the glass one and survives being carried round the house.

She will take them off. That is fine, and it is the point. A basket at the foot of the tree with her own six ornaments in it turns the whole thing from a rule she keeps breaking into a job she keeps doing. Ours were rehung roughly forty times a day, always on the same branch. The same instinct is what makes a small daily job in December work so well at this age.

Keep the cord runs behind the trunk rather than across the front, and put the lights on a plug timer so nothing warm is live overnight. If the tree sits near the sofa, tuck the lower cable under the skirt so there is nothing to pull.

The battery inside the decoration that sings

This is the one worth being strict about. Coin cells are in musical ornaments, flameless candles, light-up necklaces from the school fair, novelty cards, and the small strings of battery lights people wind through wreaths.

Swallowed, a coin cell can burn through the wall of a child’s throat within about two hours. It does not need to be a new battery. There is often no coughing and no obvious moment, which is what makes it different from every other small thing on the tree.

So check that every battery compartment in reach has a screw in it, and put the ones that do not up high. Keep spare batteries in a drawer rather than in the decorations box. If you ever think one has gone missing, call poison control on 1-800-222-1222 and go straight to an emergency room. Do not wait to see how she seems.

Under the tree counts as the tree

Presents are the second half of this and they arrive later, which is why they get planned for less. Boxes at floor level, ribbon, tape, gift bags with cord handles, and small parts inside packaging that opens more easily than the manufacturer intended.

Keep the pile small until Christmas Eve if you can, or stack it behind the tree rather than in front. If relatives send parcels early, they can live in a wardrobe. There is a wider argument about the size of that pile in the piece on too many toys, and it applies to the safety question too. Less on the floor is less to police.

For what to actually put in the pile at this age, the gift guide for two to four year olds is the practical version, and the first-Christmas list is over in gifts for a baby’s first Christmas.

Let her move the robin

A tree that has been rearranged by a two year old looks like a tree that lives in a house with a two year old in it. Every ornament in one cluster, at one height, on one side. That is not a tree that went wrong.

There is a version of the morning itself in the piece on Christmas morning traditions, and it starts from the same idea: decide the shape first, then let them move things around inside it. Do the anchor this weekend, before the box comes down from the loft. It is the only item on this page that you cannot do later, and it is the only one that matters at two in the morning.