I TOLD You: HOT, Don't TOUCH!
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Aaaaaand that is how you prevent burns with small children. #4 is 9 months old and already working on "No." as a stimulant for instant retraction of an extended hand. By the time they are old enough to walk around, most trained children are smart enough to avoid burning themselves badly by being allowed to burn themselves just a little, under careful parental supervision.
We have a BBQ pit with a big metal dome lid exactly at toddler-hand height, and it gets hot as [deleted] when there is a meal on. ALL our children got a first degree burn on their hands. NONE of them got three first degree burns, but the boys were stubborn enough to get two, each. We warn them when it is hot, and they give it a wide berth. When it is cold, they bang the top with sticks, and make me redo the brick-work by ramming it with the Power Wheels Jeep.
When a child is old enough to understand "NO" and knows to retreat from painful stimuli, teach them about the dangers of a steam vaporizer. " The light tells you it is hot. The stuff coming up tells you it is hot. Put your hand over it and you will feel it is hot." This routine scared my children enough to make them balk at putting their hand in the steam. I put my hand in the steam a foot up and said "It's okay up here" and moved the hand down, pulling it away rapidly where the steam started getting warm "HOT." They needed some encouragement, but then they would find out first-hand that the steam gets REALLY HOT right by the exhaust of the vaporizer. THEN you know what we had a problem with?
Nothing. They don't touch it because it's [deleted] HOT and they know it! Put the thing where they won't accidentally trip over it, where they won't roll out of bed onto it, and generally where they won't come into accidental contact with the steam. Then enjoy the warm, moist air.
Cool mist or warm? Warm!
Bonus: no grotty slime to clean out, just a bit of hard water scale whenever we feel like cleaning it . . . also no STINK.
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