When you have a child who comes home from school before you’re able to arrive, you want to be sure that they’re safe and protected — so you need some good latchkey kid safety tips.
No matter how responsible your child is or how safe you feel your neighborhood may be, it can be daunting to imagine what can happen to your child when you aren’t at home.
Want to make sure that the only thing you have to worry about with your latchkey kids is whether or not they spoil their dinners with junk food, or play video games instead of doing their homework?
Then utilize these three latchkey kid safety tips to ensure that your children are as safe as possible when they’re home alone.
Opt For an Advanced, Professionally-Installed Home Security System
There are plenty of things that can happen when your child is home alone. It’s not just about threats that can come in from the outside. Latchkey kid safety tips often focus on keeping your child safe from intruders, and that’s great, but what about when the threat is inside your home? A child might not recognize the warning signs of carbon monoxide. Even if you’ve been over them, they might not remember how to react. Worse, a child is more likely to forget something that’s been left on the stove or to panic in the event of a fire.
With a complete home security system, however, you won’t have to worry about whether carbon monoxide or fire are threatening your child. The detectors for those vital items become simply part of the home security package. With a smart system, you’ll be able to check out whether or not there are any problems at home from the comfort of the office, letting you know that your child is safe and secure.
Besides acts of God, faulty appliances, an electrical spark at the wrong moment, and other dangers can — and do — happen. Protect your child by combining your security monitoring with fire, carbon monoxide, and emergency monitoring.
Monitor Your House — and Your Child
With a complete home security system, you can know exactly when your child gets home every day. One of the most important latchkey kid safety tips is always knowing where your child is. With a smart security system, you don’t have to wait for your child to call and check in to know exactly where they are and when they arrived at home. You’ll be able to observe when they open the door and whether or not they leave again, all without budging from your desk. This also makes it more difficult than ever for your child to sneak off without your knowledge or consent!
Not every child will take advantage of the hours you have to spend at work, but some of them will. You don’t want your child to be the one who sneaks off with a friend, coming home just before you’re ready to step through the door. Worse, you don’t want your older child hiding a member of the opposite sex while you’re away at work!
Forget the Hide-a-Key
Even the most responsible kid in the world will occasionally walk out the door without their key in the morning, especially if you aren’t right there to remind him to tuck it into his pocket. Thankfully, with a smart security system, you don’t have to worry about the possibility that your child will spend the hours between getting off the bus and you getting out of work sitting on the front step, unable to get inside the house even if they want to.
With a complete home security system, you don’t have to worry about all the latchkey kid safety tips that direct you to hide a key in an appropriate location or encourage you to find a way to buy a key that your child won’t forget. Instead, your security system makes it possible for your child to open the door even when they’ve forgotten their key at home by using Z Wave devices, then lock the house up again once they’re inside. It’s the kind of security you can’t put a price on.
Ensuring that your latchkey kid is safe is your top priority. You might not have a choice about whether or not you have to go to work, but you certainly have a choice about how you choose to protect your child. A top-notch security system will protect your child from fire, carbon monoxide, and outside threats, but even better, it will help protect them from the fallout of their own bad decisions. You can’t watch your child every moment, but your security system can protect them whenever they’re inside your doors.
At ProTech Security, we have a strong history of experience, innovation, and customer service. The ProTech Security Advantage is more than 30 years of service in Northeast Ohio and a strong commitment to providing quality, cost-effective protection for homes, businesses, educational institutions and government facilities. To see what ProTech Security can do for you, contact us today.