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.
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; the head is heavy relative to the body, so a roll off a change table is a head-first fall; and drowning needs only 3cm of water and a moment's absence. Button battery ingestion also begins as babies mouth everything.
Sources: Red Nose Safe Sleeping · Royal Life Saving · AIHW · ACCC Product Safety
This is the highest injury rate of any childhood age group. Toddlers can climb, open, pour and wander, but can't yet assess consequences. Almost every physical danger on this site peaks somewhere in this window.
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.
Sources: AIHW Injury in Australia · Royal Life Saving · NSW Poisons Information Centre · Kidsafe Australia
Physical injury rates fall as judgement improves, but the backyard and the street bring new ones: 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 cause ~6,500 hospitalisations a year, and most dog bites to children are from a known dog at home. Meanwhile, exposure to conflict or DV begins shaping behaviour and mood.
Sources: AIHW · Kidsafe Australia · AIFS Growing Up in Australia
Physical injury keeps falling, but this is where intentional self-harm hospitalisations begin to climb. 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. Around 1 in 7 young people will self-harm by age 17, and distress often shows first as withdrawal or sleep change rather than words.
Sources: AIHW · AIFS Growing Up in Australia · eSafety Commissioner
Self-harm hospitalisations peak at 15–17, at around three times the rate of 10–14. 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. 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 · AIFS Growing Up in Australia · ABS Personal Safety Survey
The storehouse groups checklists by room and by stage, so you can act on exactly the risks that matter right now.