Protect Your Child
From Accidents

HANNA, almost three years old, was with her parents, Karl-Erik and Birgitta, as they cleaned up the house of a neighbor who had died. After a while, Hanna came out of a room with a bottle of pills in her hand. She had eaten some of them. Checking the bottle, Birgitta was horror-struck. It was a bottle of the neighbor's heart medicine.

Quickly, Hanna was taken to a hospital, where she remained overnight in intensive care. Despite a dose of medicine that could have damaged her health permanently, she suffered no aftereffects. Why? Because she had eaten a portion of cooked cereal just before she swallowed the pills. Some of the poison was absorbed by the cereal, which was forced out when she threw up.

Hanna's experience is hardly unique. Daily, thousands of children worldwide meet with accidents that make a call to a doctor or a hospital necessary. Each year, 1 out of every 8 children in Sweden receives medical treatment after an accident. Hence, if you are a parent, there is a substantial chance that something similar could happen to your child.

It is not strange that children are often injured in a familiar environment, such as the home and its surroundings. The type of injuries they incur change as they get older. An infant can easily fall off its nursing table or choke on a piece of food or a small object that gets stuck in its throat. Young children often fall when they climb about or get burned or poisoned when they touch or taste things within reach. Children of school age often get injured in traffic accidents or when playing outdoors.

Many of these accidents are preventable. With a little foresight and a knowledge of your child's level of development, you can help prevent injuries or even fatal accidents. This has been proved by an organized child-safety program that has been carried out in Sweden since 1954. Before that time, more than 450 children died every year in accidents. Today, the yearly death toll has dropped to about 70.

Indoors

"You cannot teach the one-year, two-year, or three-year-old to avoid dangers and then count on them remembering," says child psychologist Kerstin Bäckström. Hence, the responsibility for helping your child to avoid accidents rests on you as the parent—or on other adults with whom the child stays now and then.

To begin with, take a look around your home. Use the checklist in the adjoining box. Perhaps some safety devices are not available in all countries or are not available at a reasonable price. Yet with a little ingenuity and imagination, you can probably think of solutions that will work in your particular circumstances.

For example, if you have loop-type handles on your kitchen drawers, you can lock them by slipping a stick through the handles. A similar arrangement could also serve as a lock for the oven door. Plastic bags are much less dangerous if you tie them in a knot when storing them.

Perhaps you can think of other simple ways to prevent accidents in and around the home and can share these with friends and acquaintances who have small children.

Outdoors

Check the areas where your child plays. Most injuries to children over four years of age happen when they play outdoors. They fall down and hurt themselves or perhaps fall off their bicycle. The most common fatal outdoor accidents for children between the ages of three and seven are traffic accidents and drowning.

When you inspect playgrounds, check to see if the equipment is in good working condition so that the child will not be hurt when using it. Are surfaces under swings, climbing frames, and similar equipment composed of soft material, like loose sand, so that the child will not hurt himself if he falls?

Are there pools of water or streams near your home? Only a few inches of water is enough for a one- or two-year-old child to drown. "When a little child falls facedown in a pool of water, it loses its sense of what is up and what is down," says child psychologist Bäckström. "The child simply cannot get back up again."

The most fundamental rule, therefore, is this: Never let a child between one and three years of age play alone outdoors without adult supervision. If there is a quantity of water in the neighborhood, wait until the child is considerably older before allowing him to play outdoors without supervision.

Safely in car seat; Wearing protective bicycle helmet

In Traffic

The same is true if there is traffic around your home. "A preschooler can only take in tangible messages and concentrate on one thing at a time," observes Bäckström. "But traffic is full of abstract conceptions and double messages." Do not let your child cross a street on his own before he is of school age. Children are not considered mature enough to cycle alone in busy traffic until they are at least 12 years of age, according to experts.

Teach your child to use a safety helmet when cycling, riding, roller-skating, or tobogganing. Head injuries are difficult to treat and can cause permanent damage—or even be fatal! At one children's clinic, 60 percent of those treated after bicycle accidents suffered injuries to the head and the face, but those using helmets suffered no severe head injuries.

Also, make sure your child is safe when traveling by car. Many countries have laws that require small children to be buckled up in specially designed safety seats. This has drastically reduced the rate of injuries and deaths among children involved in traffic accidents. If safety seats are available where you live, using one could be good life insurance. But make sure it is an approved model. Note that seats for infants are different from those for children from about three years of age.

Our children are precious gifts from Jehovah, and we want to take care of them in every way. (Psalm 127:3, 4) As good parents, Karl-Erik and Birgitta have always been concerned about protecting their children—before as well as after the episode with Hanna. "But of course we were more cautious after that incident," Karl-Erik admits. "Now we have grandchildren, and we always make sure that our medicines are locked up," Birgitta concludes.