My son was, err, unusually active and inquisitive. At the age where in theory he should have just been learning to crawl, he kicked the wooden bars out of his crib so he could fall onto the floor and crawl all around the house. He got into the spin dryer with a load of laundry. At two, he came up missing once – after a half hour of frantic searching, I was sitting on his toybox womdering what I hadn’t covered yet when it suddenly started vibrating and screaming. (After letting him out, I hastily “modified” the latch so it wouldn’t latch.) At three, he got away from his mother and came up the ladder to help me fix the roof. But he never stuck his head into the toilet.

Locking the bathroom is a pretty good idea, because bathrooms tend to accumulate all kinds of things babies might try to eat that aren’t intended for internal consumption. It’s probably easier to see the door is always locked than that everything is always put up high – and your kid will be climbing shelves long before you expect it, anyhow. If they’re anything like my kids, by the time they’re ready to use the bathroom, you’d better have them taught to stay out of stuff – because they’ll climb anything, and be better at opening your locks than you are…

We ended up with the kind that connects at the seat bolts, and consists of an arm that swings out over the lid. Most importantly, the seat stays up when you swing it back to lift the lid.