A child's risks change faster than almost anything else about them. The infant who can't roll becomes the toddler who can reach the stove becomes the teenager whose deepest risks are invisible. Here is each stage — the dangers, why they peak, and what prevents them.
Sources: AIHW, Injuries in children and adolescents 2021–22, place of occurrence; hospitalisations by age. The 20% and 22% are shares of child injury hospitalisations.
Infants can't reposition themselves, call out, or lift their own head from a soft surface. The dangers are the ones that arrive to them: bedding, water, and gravity.
Airways are tiny and easily blocked: babies under 1 are 7.5 times more likely than adults to be hospitalised for choking or suffocation. The head is heavy relative to the body, so a roll off a change table is a head-first fall, and head and neck injuries are 70% of injury hospitalisations in babies under 1. Drowning needs only a few centimetres of water and a moment's absence. And 9 in 10 injuries to babies happen at home.
Sources: AIHW, Injuries in children and adolescents 2021–22. Prevention advice: Red Nose, Royal Life Saving, Product Safety Australia.
Ages 1–4 are 20% of child injury hospitalisations (about 17,800 a year), and 3 in 4 of their injuries happen at home. Toddlers can climb, open, pour and wander, but can't yet assess consequences.
Curiosity and new mobility outrun understanding. A toddler will drink what looks like cordial, pull a hot drink off a table, climb a bookshelf, or slip into a pool in seconds of quiet. Their skin scalds faster and their airway is still small. Each year about 7,400 children aged 1–4 are hospitalised for falls, 1,185 for poisoning, 979 for burns and 179 after drowning incidents.
Sources: AIHW, Injuries in children and adolescents 2021–22. Prevention advice: Royal Life Saving, NSW Poisons Information Centre, Kidsafe Australia.
The backyard and the street bring trampolines, bikes, and the family dog. At school age, the effects of family conflict and early emotional harm start to show.
Children are more independent and more adventurous, but still overestimate their skill. Trampolines, bikes and the family dog all carry risk, and exposure to conflict or DV begins shaping behaviour and mood.
No separate national figures for this age group in our sources. Prevention advice: Kidsafe Australia.
This is where intentional self-harm hospitalisations begin to climb: 31 per 100,000 under 15, against 256 per 100,000 at 15–19. The risks are now harder to see: online bullying, social pressure, parental conflict, and the compounding weight of earlier emotional harm.
Adolescence brings intense social and emotional development, a 24-hour online world, and a widening gap between what a child feels and what they can say. About 1 in 9 teenagers (11%) self-injured in the past year at 16–17, and distress often shows first as withdrawal or sleep change rather than words.
Sources: AIHW, Suicide and self-harm monitoring: young people 2023–24; AIFS, Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (2021). Prevention advice: eSafety Commissioner.
Self-harm hospitalisation rates are highest at 15–19: 256 per 100,000, about 8 times the rate for under-15s. Girls 15–19: 405 per 100,000, boys 114 (3.5 times). Ages 16–18 are 22% of child injury hospitalisations (about 19,500 a year). Substance experimentation moves into the home. And for young people in out-of-home care, turning 18 can mean the "leaving-care cliff" — support removed exactly when it's most needed.
Independence, identity and pressure all intensify, while the brain's risk-and-reward systems are still maturing. About 1 in 9 teenagers (11%) self-injured in the past year at 16–17. Girls: 1 in 4 (26%) by 17; boys 9%. Sexual-assault disclosure also peaks in adolescence — though most of what's disclosed happened years earlier. For care leavers, the loss of structure at 18 compounds every other risk.
Sources: AIHW, Injuries in children and adolescents 2021–22; AIHW, Suicide and self-harm monitoring: young people 2023–24; AIFS, Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (2021).
The storehouse groups checklists by room and by stage, so you can act on exactly the risks that matter right now.
Child Safety at Home
Australian home-injury and child-harm data, made clear so it can be prevented.