Baby Safety Month: How to Choose & Use Great Products for Your Kids

This September marks the 27th Baby Safety Month, an awareness month held each year by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association. As a “voice of the industry,” JPMA is dedicated to keeping consumers and manufacturers educated on the safety practices of baby products.

“Baby Safety Month was launched many years ago for JPMA in an effort to bring recognition to baby products and baby product safety to parents,” JPMA’s Executive Director Kelly Mariotti says. “Certainly, a lot of organizations utilize it, as well, to spread similar messaging.”

Each Baby Safety Month focuses on a key aspect of the organization’s philosophy, with this year focusing on helping families ‘Choose and Use.’ This is with the hope that families are encouraged to carefully choose the best products for their children and where they are in their development, as well as using these products to their fullest capacities.

Mariotti hopes that parents are able to keep this Choose & Use messaging in mind when shopping for baby products for their kids. With the wide array of designer and novelty products that are now available for kids, it’s increasingly important to keep these safety measures in mind for your family. “It’s so easy to fall in love with the fashion of a product, which it is certainly important to fall in love with certain bells and whistles if it offers what you think may be appealing to your child, but it’s vital to always, always, always look at the packaging and really look at the use and instructions that are provided on that packaging.”

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JPMA’s key goal is to help families keep their children safe. “First of all, when you’re shopping for baby products, certainly soliciting advice and opinions of what your friends and your other families love is a great thing to do, but you really need to be sure to choose products that are right for the purpose you’re going to be using them for and also that fit your child appropriately given your child’s age and development at any given time.” While it can be easy to cut corners, and ignore something like an extra strap or harness that’s attached to a baby seat, Mariotti urges parents to utilize these things “without fail every time.”

JPMA uses various methods to keep families informed and safe. The Baby Safety Month blog is constantly updated with new safety tips for parents. With articles covering a range of topics from home safety to crib and nighttime safety, it serves as a valuable resource for parents–both experienced and new–to learn more on how they can keep their kids safe.

Take a look at the organization’s Baby Safety Zone to learn more about safety in a fun, interactive way!