Childproof audio

I would think tethered floor standers might make sense. Hot and or sharp components should be out of harms reach. Even speaker ports welcome investigating hands, the contents of which are not something one would want in small mouths. Cables and power cords should be kept from reach and possible tripping. Delicate turntables may take some real effort to keep safe. Large CRTs and their stands are notoriously unstable and are a serious concern. Some of the new softer video screens can be easily damaged by "creative" little ones. All in all if you can keep a seperate locked room from children till they are mature enough is the best solution. Nothing beats complete adult supervision.

We have a 2 1/2 y/o baby girl. I have an open audio rack with gear that could get destroyed if she puts her hands on it, particularly the disc tray on a high end CDP. And, I have 50 lbs. active speakers on 24" stands with spiked feet. We live in an average home with a living room with system that gets lots of traffic. We have not "baby proofed" any of this system, although we've gone to great lengths to baby proof just about everything else in the home. From the beginning, we've insisted that she not touch any components, speakers, cables, etc. and on the rare occasion she has touched something audio related, we have intervened quickly. She understands we're very serious about this and she respects the expectations.

This has worked very well. She loves to listen with us and we now have a dance floor in front of our system, but she knows not to touch the audio gear as it belongs to mommy and daddy. As we have set good ground rules, she doesn't even test us in this area, although she does test with a lot of other everyday stuff like a good 2.5 y/o should.

I have a neighbor nearby whose speakers got ruined because he allowed his toddler son to bang on the grilles mimicking the bass when they'd all be listening. I don't understand how he'd allow this to happen. He now has thin speakers mounted on the walls.

My point....by good supervision, redirecting, and eventually firm ground rules, you may save yourself a lot of hastle trying to baby proof something that is inherently unbaby proofable. They're smart little people who can be taught and will respect parents wishes if parents take the time to teach and provide accountability.

Good luck!

I've said this before here on Audiogon. One can not expect young children to follow house rules, even if the rules are for the childs own safety. This is the very essence of maturity. Some developmental disabilites may not be evident until 2 years of age. These disabilites are becoming much more common than once thought. Autism which is rarely diagonsed before two years of age strikes 1 in 166 now. Falling TV's have caused fatalities. Please consider ther rules of risk management. Does the the benefit of the risk outweight the consequences of the risk?

We did exactly as Sammie did, we now have a 6 year old daughter who thinks of the Audio Room as Daddys "indoor toy". Daddy doesn't play with my toys... I don't play with daddys' toys, unless daddy is supervising me. BTW she loves music and dancing and thinks TV just "sucks your brains out"