Child Damage Mitigation

Congrats!

Audio is fun. Baby's and toddlers are even more fun... that is unless you're spending your time blocking and tackling so they don't destroy your gear.

As soon as my first child started to pull herself up from crawling to standing, my Maggies became her go to spot, especially because they magically make sound and play "wheels on the bus." Child barriers never worked, they just bumped up on the equipment. Shocking the baby and squirting her with water never worked either.

My advice and this is what I did, get some sturdy speakers in there that will do the job for a few years. My go to was a pair of Vandersteen 2Ce Sigs that I had in storage. When your last baby turns 5 bring back the Maggies. In fact, maybe get even bigger Maggies, with more amplification, and a better source too, after all you had to sacrifice so much for 5 years.

Enjoy!

Dekay Miller & Geoff, I they re-made the movie "Three Men and a Baby" cast with you three, it would have to be one tough kid to survive that hour and a half.... HA

*LOL*  As a 'childless by choice' couple who builds playgrounds for residential and commercial sites for our business....

Y'all are Doomed. *L*

I get asked if we build our projects 'durable'.

"We build for nuclear war, but children....*shrug*...it's a toss up..."

millercarbons' hamster ball:  OK for awhile, until it's used as a battering ram.....

geoffk's electric dog fence:  Great until it's collapsed INTO the equipment....*POOF!*

Y'all might consider ceiling mountings....put the TT into a lockable closet....

With a new child (congrats, BTW), all bets are off....and you likely won't have the time or energy for 'sonic amusement'.....;)

One of our employees' has a new-ish son....it's just dawning on them what hath they've done.....

Enjoy your system.....in about 5~10 years.....no guarantee on that time-frame.....*evil G*

As a former Substitute Teacher in my kids school district, being a father of two (now 8 & 11), years of experience being around kids, also having been in the Audio Video Industry since 1992 and having all kinds of equipment around the house, my best parenting advice is don’t do anything - other than monitor them as much as you can as they’re growing and are around your equipment - stop them when they get close or let them touch stuff, but tell them NO and after several times, they learn ( I’m not supposed to touch that).

Now if your equipment is in a high traffic area and you can’t be in that space enough to monitor what they do, then you may need to take some extra precautions, but I warn against gates and other obstacles/barriers because to them, it becomes a challenge as to how do they get past it.

We had four levels in our old house when the kids were born, so the steps weren’t a lot - maybe 10 or so going to each level. We never used gates and yes, both kids took a tumble once, but that was it. By the time they were three, they could fly up and down the steps and kids that would come over where the parents used gates in their homes, their kids, many older than ours 4 and 5, looked like they were just learning to walk for the first time trying to go up and down our steps as my kids would just fly past them.

Never did our kids ever go around the equipment or break things - I always stopped them myself and made it clear not to touch. I even had B&W Nautilus 804’s at the time and the tweeters looked like a microphone - major attraction as they got bigger, but I always had to watch other peoples kids way more than my own when we had visitors.  They never touched those tweeters or any part of the speakers.  

Lastly, we had people over for a gathering and we always had all kinds of breakables laying around the house - glass orbs and decorative stuff - and everyone that came over would always ask why we never put them away or how they never got broken. It’s because we wanted our kids to be able to be around and exposed to those things so they wouldn’t get broken. It’s when you work so hard to prevent something from happening, that’s usually when it does.

That’s my best parenting advice.

Thanks!

Keep the kid tied up in the back yard until they are 16.