Toddler-Proofing the Tree Without Making It Look Sad

The December my daughter was almost two, I walked into the living room and found her with both hands wrapped around a branch about a foot off the floor, leaning back like she was trying to start a lawn mower. The tree was already tipping. I caught it! But three glass ornaments didn’t make it, and I spent the rest of that night vacuuming under the couch and feeling terrible about the whole thing.

So I went looking for how to toddler proof a Christmas tree, and most of what I found made me a little sad. Half of it was “put your tree in a playpen.” The other half was “only decorate the top half and leave the bottom bare.” No thank you! I didn’t want a tree that looked like it was under construction from the knees down. I wanted a tree that still looked like my tree!

It took me a couple of seasons of trial and error to land on a setup I actually liked, and the short version is this: nothing breakable below my shoulder, everything soft and unbreakable below her reach, and one very deliberate decision at the end that made the whole thing easier. Here’s all of it.

1. Anti-tip furniture straps

Do this one first! Before ornaments, before lights, before anything.

A tree stand is designed to hold a tree up against gravity. It is absolutely not designed to hold a tree up against a determined toddler pulling sideways on a branch. I anchor mine now with a KidCo anti-tip strap — the same kind you’d use on a dresser — with one end screwed into a stud behind the tree and the other looped around the center pole, down low where the branches hide it completely.

If you’re renting and you really don’t want to put a screw in the wall, clear fishing line tied from the trunk to an existing curtain rod bracket or a heavy piece of furniture works too. It’s genuinely invisible from six feet away! But it has to attach to something that won’t move, or you’ve just given her a bigger thing to pull over. (Ask me how I figured that one out.)

2. Move your breakables above your own shoulder line

This is the rule that made everything else fall into place, and it costs nothing.

Stand next to your tree. Everything above your shoulder can be whatever you want — glass, ceramic, the fragile hand-painted thing from your grandmother, all of it. Everything below your shoulder has to survive being thrown. That’s it, that’s the whole rule!

I use my shoulder and not hers on purpose, because toddlers climb, and because the height a toddler can reach on a Christmas tree goes up about six inches every time you turn around! Giving yourself that extra buffer means you’re not re-sorting the tree in the middle of December.

The nice thing is that heavier, showier ornaments already look better up high. So this rule quietly improves your tree even if you don’t have a toddler!

3. Shatterproof ball ornaments in three sizes

The bottom third of the tree needs volume, and balls are how you get volume. They just can’t be glass!

It took me four or five bad orders to find shatterproof balls that didn’t look like shatterproof balls, if you know what I mean. So many of the cheap multipacks are shiny in that hard, plasticky way that catches the light wrong and makes the whole tree look like a party store. I finally landed on this 36-piece set because it mixes matte, glitter, and shiny finishes across three different sizes, and the matte ones are what save it. Matte plastic reads as ceramic from across the room. Shiny plastic never does.

My tip: buy your shatterproof balls in the same color family you already use up top. If your top half is red and gold, don’t put a rainbow assortment at the bottom. Same colors, cheaper material, and nobody can tell where one section ends and the other begins!

4. Plush and fabric ornaments

Here’s the thing I had to make my peace with: a toddler is going to take ornaments off the tree. That is simply going to happen. So some of what’s down there should be things you want her to carry around.

Felt, fabric, wool, and plush ornaments are the answer. They’re soft, they don’t have a hard edge to catch a forehead on, and they survive being dropped, chewed, and stuffed into a toy bin. This set of four plush animals — a fox, a deer, a raccoon, and a squirrel — became her favorite thing on the entire tree, and honestly they’re cute enough that I’d have bought them anyway! She carried the fox around for two straight weeks.

Skip anything covered in loose glitter, and skip anything smaller than about three inches! Small and hard is the combination you’re avoiding.

5. Ornament hooks that actually close

Standard wire ornament hooks are little open hooks made of thin metal, and I hate them for this. They come off the branch the second anything touches them, they end up in the carpet, and they are exactly the wrong shape and size to find with a bare foot at eleven at night.

I switched the bottom of my tree over to snap-locking ornament hangers — they’re a cord with a buckle that closes around the branch, so the ornament can be pulled and tugged and it stays put. For heavier ornaments I use these adjustable no-slip hooks instead, which tighten down and hold a lot more weight than a wire hook ever will.

It’s a boring thing to spend money on. It made a bigger difference than almost anything else on this list!

6. A remote outlet for the lights

Two problems, one fix. The first problem is the cord — if the plug is behind the tree, you’re reaching through branches twice a day, which knocks ornaments loose and creates a dangling cord right at toddler eye level. The second problem is that a plug at floor level is a toy.

I run everything into a wireless remote outlet now, plugged in behind the tree once at the beginning of the season and never touched again. The remote lives on a shelf where I can reach it and she can’t. It’s a small thing, but turning the tree on from across the room instead of crawling behind it every single evening is one of my favorite decorating changes ever, y’all!

Tuck the excess cord up into the branches or run it along the baseboard with cord clips. Nothing loose, nothing loopy.

7. Give her the bottom two feet

This is the part that actually worked, and it took me the longest to be willing to try!

I stopped fixing it. The bottom two feet of my tree belong to my daughter — she puts what she wants where she wants, and I don’t quietly redistribute it after she goes to bed. Some years that has meant eleven ornaments hanging off one single branch! It has never once ruined the tree, because the colors match and because from the doorway your eye goes to the top anyway.

If your toddler wants more than that, a felt Christmas tree with its own ornaments hung on the wall in her room is such a good addition. Ours went up at her height and she rearranged it every single morning, which took so much pressure off the real one!

I’ll be honest, giving up that bottom section felt like losing something the first year. It wasn’t. It’s the part of the tree I look at most now, and it’s the reason I actually enjoy December instead of spending it saying “gentle, gentle, gentle” forty times a day.

If you toddler proof your tree this year, post it on instagram and tag me @sugardesignco — I’d love to see how you handled the bottom two feet!

-Ciera

Made something with this? Tag me @sugardesignco — I love seeing them.