My children's bedrooms in our old house were on the first floor (the master was on the second) and I never left their windows open at night--we lived out in the country. The master bedroom in our new house is on the first floor and we have transom windows on a side where the basement is partially exposed, so the transom windows are 12' off the ground or so and I leave them open, but I don't leave any of the other first floor windows open. I would talk to your window supplier about secure window options. I lived in an apartment with double hung windows, and the windows had stops on them so tney couldn't be opened more than a couple of inches when you were using the stops. There might be a similar option for casements too.

Thanks, Carolyn! I will ask the Pella guy for options on the casement windows...

One possibility is outdoor motion detectors sighted to cover the approach to the window area. They have to placed carefully so that small animals and moving branches don't set them off. Another approach is infrared beam detectors aimed across the window area, so that anyone standing in close proximity sets off an alarm.

The best way to handle the issue will depend on the exact circumstances at your house.

I have no personal knowledge regarding the beam detector linked below. It is just an example of one type of solution to the problem.

Here is a link that might be useful: Infrared Beam Detector

Another suggestion I have read about is to have two sets of security sensors at the windows: one for when they are closed and one for when the windows are open 6" or so. With this setup, you could arm the security system even with the windows open and the gap is still small enough that no one could fit through.

There are locking devices available for just about every window type that will allow them to be partially open but prevent opening them any further.

The only problem with locking devices is their inhibiting quick egress in the event of fire. Even normally quick thinking adults can panic during a fire, especially at night. Anything that might hinder someone's quick exit from a burning building needs to be considered very, very carefully.

Your friendly local fire department usually has someone who will be happy to consult on anything related to fire safety.

I may be paranoid, but I wouldn't even allow my children to have their windows open during the night in 2nd floor bedrooms! I would not be able to sleep. The fresh night air is not worth the chance that some lunatic decides that my child is easy pickings!

Ditto what dixiedoodle said.....we want to build a single story but am so scared of this exact scenario. Maybe we will build a sleeping loft my daughter to sleep in. Hey....what about one of those monitoring devices that there are for babies....maybe something like that could prove useful. I may just look into that for us (something that watches the doorway and windows).

"Your friendly local fire department usually has someone who will be happy to consult on anything related to fire safety."

And provide a one sided view that places all emphasis on fire safety with no other considerations.

Many window locking devices are placed so that they cannot be operated from the open window, but are no harder than the regular window lock to operate from inside.

Unless you are going to use laminated shatter resistant glass in every ground level window breaking the glass remains quick and simple to gain entry.

Someone could break the glass and be in and out before you even got out of bed.

The motion detecting lights and a big dog outside is probably a better deterrent than any window. Although I think high awning windows or a small slider where the transom would be is a good option.

If you are building from scratch, a lot of the newer HVAC systems have a fresh air option. I'm building ICF with spray foam so I HAVE to have this.

All windows locked and alarmed. This ain't the nifty fifties of my childhood anymore.

A few years back, a friend's mom of about 70 went to her bathroom on the second floor of her rural home in the middle of the night. When she turned the light on, she saw a man on a ladder fiddling with the window. By the time her neighbour, a Mountie, got over, the intruder was long gone. Others aren't so lucky.

You guys are RIDICULOUS.

It's much safer now than it was in the 60s, yet helicopter parents are too afriad to let their kids play outside for fear that they'll be snatched away. And now this? You really think there's any statistical likelihood that they'll be stolen from their beds?

Number of kids in the US stolen from their beds per year: MAYBE two.

Your child is more likely to be bitten by a shark and struck by lightning than kidnapped from his or her bed.

If you have ever taken your child our for a drive to calm or quiet him/her, you have exposed him/her to thousands of times the risk of sleeping with an open window. In fact, if you consider open-window sleeping to be an appreciable risk, you should NEVER take your child in the car, especially if there is any way to leave this child at home with a parent.

Accidentally drowning in the toilet is a bigger risk than being snatched from his or her bed.

Because of stupid fears of prowlers looking to murder children, people keep kids inside, and they get fat and lazy, unable to self-entertain or exercise their imaginations. (The alternative to obesity is that these misguided parents, for fear that their children might get snatched up playing outside, schedule the children to death and spend all evening ferrying them from one scripted activity to another, producing children singularly unable to rouse themselves to do anything on their own initiative and exposing them daily to thousands of times the danger of open-window sleeping.)

I'm glad our neighborhood appears to be idiot-free. All our kids PLAY OUTSIDE, ride their bikes to each other's houses, and are just allowed to be kids without grownups breathing down their necks every second.

Helmet? Of course. Safety rules? Obviously. Nailbiting over someone snatching a child from his bed? Not a chance.

"You guys are RIDICULOUS.

It's much safer now than it was in the 60s, yet helicopter parents are too afriad to let their kids play outside for fear that they'll be snatched away. And now this? You really think there's any statistical likelihood that they'll be stolen from their beds?

Number of kids in the US stolen from their beds per year: MAYBE two.

Your child is more likely to be bitten by a shark and struck by lightning than kidnapped from his or her bed."\

The American public has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to accurately weigh risks.

Why should this case be an different?

I think it is ridiculous to craft your life around preventing every possible harm that could befall you. But I don't think locking a first floor window falls into that category.

In a country with some 59 million children, abductions by a stranger are perhaps the most terrifying of crimes. But they are also the rarest. There are about 114,600 such stranger abductions attempted each year, and about 3,200 to 4,600 or around 4 percent, are successful.

Of those, an even smaller fraction, about 200 to 300, are what the FBI calls "stereotypical" kidnappings, where a child is gone overnight, transported over some distance, intended to be kept by the perpetrator or even killed.

Abductions of children by strangers are not the only risk of sleeping in an unlocked house. A serial killer entered a house in a suburban town where I used to live. Luckily the parents heard something. He didn't plan to abduct the teenager daughter, he planned to kill her. I know at least three people who have woken to find burglars in their home. What happened to Sean Taylor can happen to anyone who surprises a burglar.

Crimes against children are not the only crimes in the world. I have no kids to protect, just DH, me and the cats. I value MY life. Not to mention property.

Just do a google search for '"open window" rape statistics' or '"open window" crime statistics' and you will see why the women on this forum are concerned about this issue. You are right that the risk of child being snatched out of his/her bed are small, but it does happen and if it happens to your child it doesn't matter that the odds were 1:3,000,000 against it happening. But rape and burglary are real concerns too and are often just crimes of opportunity when an open window is spotted.

Our house is built already so I can only share the lessons I've learned. One lesson is that I would have planned for better window security. We sleep with all ground floor windows locked. DH likes to leave the upper windows open but I'm often concerned about that. I would have put in more transoms that would allow airflow without providing a big enough opening for a person to fit through. If it's not too late, look into this option. I suppose the bedrooms may need a regular window as well, for fire egress.

"You are right that the risk of child being snatched out of his/her bed are small, but it does happen and if it happens to your child it doesn't matter that the odds were 1:3,000,000 against it happening."

So if 3,000,000 people each spent $20 on additional security the cost per crime prevented would be only $60,000,000.

"...it doesn't matter that the odds were" this is the attitude of not understanding risk.

What else could be done with $60 million?
You could put an extra smoke detector in each of those houses and have a far better chance of actually saving a life.

Also, it's not $60,000,000 to prevent each crime. The two crimes are the successful crimes committed in homes with open windows. It is impossible to know how many other crimes were prevented because a house had window locks or closed windows.

Paranoia remains alive and well.

You could just brick the windows closed.

No, common sense remains alive and well. I don't need to brick my windows. Here's a link the ventilation window stops which permit a double hung window to only open a couple of inches when the stops are out. Landlords in the city of Madison, Wisconsin are required to have these, or similar stops, on all double hung windows on the first floor of rental units in the city of Madison for security purposes. I had them in a house I rented and they are easy to use and work well.

Here is a link that might be useful: ventilation window stops

Carolyn - thanks for sending that link. Here's the scene at my house last night.
10 p.m. Husband opens all windows on second level... goes to bed. Wife 10:15 p.m. (me) gets up out of bed... closes and locks all windows. Husband wakes up at 3 a.m. opens all windows. This has to stop! I will investigate these window stops. (It's just common sense)

Did you ever watch it takes a thief on Discovery channel?
If someone wants to get in your house, they will gain entrance unless you have locks connected to a security system on every door and window. Just Locks on the window? A big rock fixes that problem.

Even a dog doesnt deter them. It showed where the person had a pitbull and the burglar gave the dog some meat and went on his way to rob the house.

"If one child was taken from their room per year that would be ONE TOO MANY!"

The if it only saves one argument (and it includes the 'for the children' also).

While you may believe what you write, we cannot run a society based on such rules.

The number of deaths in auto accidents in the US is often taken as an indicator of what level of risk the public will accept.

The 2008 number is 37,261 deaths.
It works out to 12.25 per 100,000 population.

Risks need to be kept in a rational perspective.

You are far more likely to be killed in an auto accident, but we drive almost every day.

Here is a link that might be useful: NHTSA FARS system

Surely there must be a company making this sort of window in the US?
I have a fan in front of the opening in summer and that brings in the cool air, without having to have the window fully open.

Here is a link that might be useful: Windows with locks

In Sweden it is common for windows to have a thin opening that can be opened or closed for ventilation and you can leave it open even when not home.

You can see one example of it at the top of this window (there are many different variations and some are larger and like a tiny door next to the window):

"we cannot run a society based on such rules". I never said that we should make it mandatory that parents arm their windows, I'm not a Democrat. This is a free country (for now anyway) and parents have the right to keep their kids safe how ever they feel. I feel it is the parents responsibility to keep them safe. If something happened I would rather know that I did everything I could to prevent it and not regret anything.

Too many parents now a days take no responsibility for their kids. They are killing each other with railroad ties, lighting other kids on fire and going to school with guns. Where are the parents? Where are the morals and values? Where is teaching children there are consequences for actions and life is not a video game.

I understand your stats that we are more likely to get into a car accident than have a child abducted from their bed but do you think that Polly Klaas's parents would take comfort in those stats. So if it was your child you would just say wow, they had more of a chance being killed in a car accident than being abducted from home.

I'm a woman. I also understand statistics.

>I understand your stats that we are more likely to get into a car accident than have a child abducted from their bed but do you think that Polly Klaas's parents would take comfort in those stats. So if it was your child you would just say wow, they had more of a chance being killed in a car accident than being abducted from home.

That's insane thinking. If my kids died because they got a phenomenally rare form of cancer, I'd be devastated, but I wouldn't spend time obsessing about the possibilities of really rare cancers and wouldn't make sure I lived close to a great cancer center, just in case. Nor would I go around hysterically advising parents of the same if it DID happen.

>The biggest risk from an unlocked window is burglary and a possible encounter with the burglar(s). That risk will vary greatly by location and time of day.

The VAST majority of robberies are during the day--for a reason!

If someone who knows you wants to kill you, having a bedroom on the second floor isn't going to help. And the vast majority of murders are of this type.

If a stranger is interested in a crime of opportunity, there are many other things to think about before decided that having no first-floor bedrooms window is the solution. A stranger can enter just as easily through any other window and then CLIMB THE STAIRS.

Windows can be broken, believe it or not, too.

Want to block off all windows with bars? Then you're far more likely to die--from a fire!

If you live in a bad neighborhood or a neighborhood with high "crime exposure," then you should have burglar alarms, lights, thorny plants, a dog, etc., before worrying about what floor your bedroom is on.

Best advice for not getting murdered? Stay away from unstable people. Seriously. Be careful who you marry! And stay away from drugs, gangs, etc., and those who are involved in them. Don't work in a convenience store or gas station. or be a food delivery person. Don't live in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and don't walk through them, either.

There. You've just taken out more than 98% of the risk of being killed.

I have spent my 70+ years in a 1st floor bedroom. My dad drilled several matching slots in the frames for large nails to hold the window open at several heights I was able to handle these from the age of 5. Both in case of fire from the inside, or an intruder from the outside. Even today I use the same system.

It's easy. no tech, and I had a fog horn just in case. I never got to use the fog horn, but the large nails have never failed.

I’m in a two story house with bedrooms upstairs, in a large, fairly wealthy suburb in the Midwest that has a low crime rate. I run my AC very little, much preferring the fresh air. However, I never leave my first floor windows open at night.

If I were to live in a ranch house, I would definitely install and use a security system on all doors and windows. It would give me peace of mind for theft and intruders.