3 year old wandering into your garage ? I have had cats sneak in but never an unsupervised kid spraying chemicals the parents are lucky he didn’t grab the sprayer and squeeze the trigger when it was pointing in his face rim cleaner in the eyes ouch. Where the parents horrified ?
Yea, we're all VERY lucky it wasn't worse than just some cleanup. We've all done a sweep of the garages and moved chemicals up out of little hands reach.
Basically our street has 5 houses on one side that back up to a large field. We're in house #4 with 2 boys (18mo, and 8yrs). House #5 has 2 boys (3yrs and 7yrs). House #3 has 2 gilrs (11yrs and 22yrs), House #2 has 1 boy (9yrs). ALL of the parents and kids were in the back yard watching kids run around. This is pretty much a nightly "thing" between dinnertime and dark here. The older ones are driving power wheels and running circles around the house, while the younger ones play on playsets, with toys in the grass, etc. The 3yr old has a power wheels as well, and will often follow the bigger ones around the houses. Typically not a big deal. Realized the 3yr old hadn't made his lap in the appropriate amount of time so we went looking. Found him in our garage with the wheel cleaner "helping" to clean the boat, suv, and back wall of the garage.
Wheel cleaner was in a 5gal bucket with the rest of my detailing supplies. Bucket was under the work bench, hidden behind jack stands, jack, oil dry bag, and oil extractor. Guess those didn't look like fun to him. All the chemicals have been temporarily locked in the basement storage area, with new shelves being built this weekend to keep these things out of reach of the smaller kids for the forseeable future.
We removed his soaked shirt, and hosed him down quickly. Made sure he knew he wasn't in trouble and asked repeatedly if he drank any of it. He says he didn't, and there wasn't any on his face or head. We monitored him for a few hours, and kept filling him with water (as much as you can force a 3yr old to drink anyway) as per directed by poison control center. All the parents are good neighbors and friends, so we were just as worried about the little guy as they were. Once the kids were in bed, they came back out (we usually sit on the back deck and unwind at the end of the day) and apologized profusely. I'm not worried about it even a little bit, and not upset at all. I'm really just glad he's not hurt.
Moral of the story here......keep chemicals up and out of reach, regardless of how well you watch your kids, or how well you think you have those chemicals hidden. He wasn't out of sight for more than maybe 2 minutes, if that, and this could have had a MUCH worse ending than just some scrubbing and cleaning of vehicles.
