Playing with knives

When there are kids in the house, it pays to keep track of your sharp knives. Photo / Supplied

There she was, standing in the kitchen, waving the big silver carving knife like a fairy wand.

And before I could reach her, she ran the edge of the blade across the palm of her hand like a scene from a horror movie.

Luckily our knives are ridiculously blunt - but even so, if she'd dropped it on her foot, it would have happily sliced off one of her toes.

She'd managed to get hold of the knife - the largest in our arsenal of knives - when I left the kitchen and the broccoli I was chopping, and walked over to the stereo to change the music.

When I turned around she'd dragged it off the bench.

The reason I bring this little incident up is because last week was Safety NZ Week. Believe it or not, 570 of us Kiwis are fatally injured in the home every year (that's more deaths than car crashes account for), and thousands more are injured.

By the looks of the statistics, most of the time it's stupid stuff like falling down stairs, or the DIY disaster of toppling off a ladder.

Grown ups should know better. But what about the little ones who don't know better?

For kids like my little girl Mia, a knife is a new and exciting object.

And something like a dishwasher tablet is a yummy gobstopper.

But it's not only knives and that delicious-looking green washing up liquid that can be deadly.

According to ACC, in the last year, 23 kids (under 15 years old) died in the home - mostly from falls. Slips, trips, and tumbles are evil.

You hear other horror stories that happen around the home too.

Some are fatal, like kids being run over in driveways; others are disfiguring and life-long injuries, such as being scalded by hot cups of tea or a pot of boiling water on the stove.

I always remember my mum's mantra: Turn the saucepan handle in so it's not hanging out over the stove top. It's a simple and safe solution.

These days, in our house we have those annoying but effective plastic locks on most of the dangerous draws, and a D-shaped lock for the cupboard with the household cleaners in.

My wife and I are very careful, some might say to the point of paranoia, but I reckon it's better to be safe than sorry.

And by the way, I am now a fanatical freak about the whereabouts of our carving knives and other sharp objects.

- Scott Kara

Pictured above: When there are kids in the house, it pays to keep track of your sharp knives. Photo / Supplied