Everyone with kids knows that their curiosity can often get the better of them, and when you install a piece of tech as mysterious and foreign as a garage door, they are going to want nothing more than to explore it. At the same time, garage doors can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, so it’s very important that we teach our kids a little bit about garage door safety. In this article, we’ll discuss some helpful methods to teach your kids how to be safe around garage doors.
Explain to children how garage doors work
Kids are mainly curious about things that seem strange and new, right? So why not introduce them to your new garage door the proper way – before they get the chance to mess about with it when you aren’t looking? Take some time to show your kids the garage door – from the emergency stop, automatic reversal to all the levers and pulleys that make it move. Teach them how it works just as your installation technician taught you, and you eliminate any sort of strange wonder from the contraption, and at the same time lower the risk of your kids growing curious and tempted to interfere with it.
When you show your kids how your garage door works, you should take extra care to explain to them the seriously dangerous parts of the contraption. This will vary from model to model, but in most architectural garage doors, it will include the spring system and lifting cables, which vary in levels of tension depending on the height of the door. These should never be touched or tampered with, as they can be directly harmful to anyone in their path.
Establish some hard garage door rules
There are a few things that everyone needs to know when it comes to garage doors. To adults, these may seem like common sense, but kids might need a little bit of reiteration to get the picture. The main things kids must always remember about garage doors are:
- Don’t leave anything in the way of the garage door, make sure you park your bike far enough away when it is open and don’t lean anything against it when it is closed.
- Make sure no one (and check for the cats, too) is standing in the way of the garage door before you press the close button.
- If your garage door has a passcode, make sure the kids know not to share it with anyone.
Help them to learn that it is not a toy
To kids, everything is a toy! And a moving contraption that has climbable features and buttons that cause parts to move, all within arm’s reach – well, that sounds like a child’s heaven! Unfortunately, it isn’t. It’s important to teach your kids that the garage door isn’t a toy, and that treating it as such could get them into dangerous situations.
Kids will often see the struts on the inside of a garage door as something they can climb, but the extra weight placed on these struts can cause unnecessary strain on the mechanics of the garage door. Likewise, overuse of the buttons (like, say, from kids having way too much fun with the clicker system) can also cause the mechanics to strain and wear out much faster. If you’re really worried about your kids using the garage door as a toy, assign their older siblings the responsibility of making sure they don’t play around when they’re near the door.
Garage doors the whole family will love
Ultimately, garage doors are safe structures when used appropriately. We know this because, at Prestige Doors and Gates, we’ve been supplying quality garage doors for over 25 years. If you’re in the process of buying a garage door that you and your family will love and trust, get in touch to learn about our options today.
