Make Injury Prevention Your Number One Intention
Sadly, more than 12,000 children between the ages of 0-19 die each year from an unintentional injury according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, this equates to more than one child dying each hour in the United States. Even more sobering is that many of these deaths were preventable. Among the leading causes are car crashes, suffocation, drowning, poisoning, fire or burns, and falls.
With the month of November serving as National Child Safety and Protection Month, it is a great reminder to focus on what you can do to help protect your loved ones. As we watch the children in our lives grow and develop, we want to see them gain more independence. However, we also want to ensure they make safe and healthy choices. Therefore, as parents, grandparents, guardians, teachers, and other important adult figures, you have the responsibility to advocate for safety, role model safe and healthy behaviors, and reinforce rules to prevent injuries and incidents from occurring. Additionally, it is important to repeat the rules frequently and assign consequences when they are not followed to show the importance of keeping safety at the forefront.
Keeping in mind the leading causes of incidents, here are some important safety tips and reminders:
When in the car, always conducts a safety check to ensure the driver and all passengers are wearing seatbelts and that car seats or boosters are properly installed. If you have teen driver, discuss weather conditions or other factors that can lead to hazardous diving conditions and how they should handle the situation. Never get behind the wheel, or allow someone else to get behind the wheel, that may be sleep deprived or under the influence.
Suffocation often occurs due to a child’s sleeping environment. Therefore, when putting a child to bed, remove all soft, fluffy, and loose bedding from the baby’s sleep area such as pillows, blankets, quilts, bumper pads, sleep positioners, stuffed toys, and other soft products. Also, avoid co-sleeping or bed-sharing with your child.
From swimming pools to bathtubs to even buckets of water, drowning can happen quickly and quietly. Therefore, adult supervision is key. Ensure water sources around the home, farm, or ranch are secure and access is limited. Since incidents can happen in the blink of an eye, always wear a properly fitted life jacket when boating.
Take a look underneath your kitchen sink, laundry room, garage, or medicine cabinet. Household cleaning agents, prescription drugs, and pesticides may be easily accessible to a curious child, and even resemble a popular candy or sports drink. Therefore, put locks on anything and everything that can open or keep these products in areas outside a child’s reach.
To combat fires or burns, block access to the kitchen stove, fireplaces, space heaters and radiators and hide matches and lighters. Never leave a child unattended in a room where these are in use. Store flammable liquids tightly sealed in original containers, out of reach. Cover unused electrical outlets with safety caps. Take extra precautions by having working smoke alarms, fire extinguisher throughout the home or farm, and have an evacuation plan in place.
Avoid slips, trip and falls by keeping areas throughout the home tidy. Use bins to store toys, remove any items that could block doorways or clutter staircases, and use nightlights in bedrooms and bathrooms for added visibility. For babies and toddlers, properly install safety gates to protect curious children from harm.
The “Safety Day Corner” is a safety message by the Progressive Agriculture Foundation® (PAF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, with the mission to provide education, training, and resources to make farm, ranch, and rural life safer and healthier for all children and their communities. Recognized as the largest rural safety and health education program for children in North America, the Foundation’s Progressive Agriculture Safety Day® program, has reached more than 1.9 million youth since 1995. For more information about PAF and its programs, visit: www.progressiveag.org.