Summertime reminders

As summer approaches, so does the prime injury season
for children. Parents have different ideas about how to keep their kids
safe, but their assumptions don't always match up with some of the
biggest known threats.
"By far, the leading cause of death in children is injuries, and there's
a lot we can do to prevent those injuries," said Garry Gardner, a
pediatrician in Darien, Ill., and chairman of the American Academy of
Pediatrics' committee on injury, violence and poison prevention.
"Injuries, in general, cause more deaths in kids over a year of age than
the next seven leading causes of death combined."
Parents shouldn't underestimate their role in keeping their kids out
of harm's way, said Alfred Sacchetti, an emergency physician at Our Lady
of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, N.J. "You are the No. 1 safety
feature that comes with your child."
Here are some of the biggest safety risks for children during the summer
and otherwise -- and what you can do to minimize them.

1. Suffocation and strangulation. This pair is
the leading cause of unintentional-injury deaths in children under age
1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
How to reduce the risk: Make sure your infant
has a sleeping environment free of pillows and soft bedding, and put him
or her to sleep on his back in a crib, rather than in a bed with
adults. Also position the baby far away from loose or hanging cords.
Parents should use cribs with four fixed sides, rather than those with
sides that drop down. With the latter, parts can more easily break,
deform or detach, opening up spaces where youngsters can become
entrapped and suffocate, according to the Consumer Product Safety
Commission and Consumer Reports. Drop-side cribs have been responsible
for 32 infant and toddler deaths in the past nine years, according to
the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has recalled 7 million
such cribs since 2005.
Parents who use a drop-side crib should check the plastic slides
regularly and tighten the hardware if necessary, said Don Mays, senior
director for product safety at Consumer Reports. "If there's any missing
or broken hardware, get rid of the crib," he said. "Don't try to fix it yourself."

2. Drowning. Among children ages 1 to 4,
drowning is nearly tied with motor-vehicle accidents as the leading
cause of death. Incidents frequently revolve around swimming pools and bathtubs.
How to reduce the risk: Never leave a child
unattended in a bathtub or allow a kid to swim without supervision.
Avoid making or answering phone calls; that's the biggest distraction
for parents when children are in a bath or pool, sometimes with fatal
results, Sacchetti said.
Home swimming pools should have a fence that wraps around all four sides
of the pool instead of having one side open to the house, he said.
Having four-sided fencing plus a separate pool-entrance gate can greatly
reduce the likelihood of a child falling in and drowning.
Swimming lessons for kids over six months old can be fun, but parents
shouldn't get a false sense of security because there's no such thing as
drown-proofing your child, Gardner said. "I would recommend touch
supervision under the age of three or four," he said, which means you're
supervising your child in the pool or lake and they're only a hand reach away.

3. Motor-vehicle crashes. Car accidents are the
leading cause of death among children over one year old, according to
the CDC. And they account for as many as two-thirds of deaths among
teenagers and young adults age 15 to 24.
How to reduce the risk: Using age-appropriate
car seats is critical to boosting a small child's chances of surviving a
crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Infants from birth to at least age 1 and 20 pounds should ride facing
backward in a car seat placed in the back seat. After that, children
should ride in the back seat using forward-facing toddler seats and then
booster seats until regular seat belts fit properly -- usually not
until age 8 or when they're 4 feet 9 inches tall, the NHTSA said.
Parents can have their car-seat installation checked by a professional
for free. The NHTSA's website lists car-safety experts by area.

4. Other car-related accidents. Nearly 42% of
the nontraffic fatalities in children under age 15 between 2004 and 2008
happened because drivers backed over kids, who often were in the
vehicles' blind spots, according to Kids and Cars, a nonprofit that
tracks such accidents. More than 18% of nontraffic deaths occurred
because children got heatstroke after being left in cars. Other risks
include power-window strangulation, trunk entrapment and vehicles that
are accidentally set in motion.
How to reduce the risk: Teach children not to
play in or around cars and supervise them carefully around vehicles.
Make sure kids aren't around before pressing the gas pedal.
It doesn't take long for a child left in a car to overheat and die. So
drivers should put a stuffed animal in the front seat or a briefcase or
purse in the back seat so they don't forget about the child in the back
seat. "It can get very hot, lethally hot, very quickly, and children
should never be allowed to be alone in a car ever, even for a moment," Gardner said.

5. Head injuries. Brain injuries remain among the most devastating for patients.
How to reduce the risk: Always use the proper
car seat or seat belts. Make sure kids wear sport-specific helmets when
they're playing sports or riding bicycles or skateboards. A child's
aversion to helmets is no excuse for not wearing them, Sacchetti said.
"Your responsibility is to be their parent, not their friend," he said.
"The one thing you can't do is sacrifice their safety to make them like you."

by TomT

Each day as I search for news at this time of the year, I am inundated with stories of children who die from being left in scorching hot vehicles for hours at a time or those who accidentally fall into pools or ponds. There are at least two or three stories a day of children being ferried to day cares or to the store that are "accidentally", "inadvertently" left in vehicles. The temperatures that can build up inside an unvented vehicle are astronomical. One story today provoked me to write this to reach out to parents and guardians and remind them of special threats that can occur during the summer season.
The little girl was playing hide-n-seek with her friends and hid in the family car in the driveway. After awhile the mom came out and began searching for her lost toddler daughter. They never thought of looking in the car. I suppose the child was in there a little while and suffered heat stroke/hyperthermia and passed out. She was finally found and was pronounced dead a short time later. Oddly, the mother was, though struck by grief, somewhat nonchalant when she commented that you cannot have your children in your sight 24/7. Oh really? A 4 year old?
More than 50 percent of the children who died from heat stroke were
forgotten by a caring adult who became distracted when they left the
vehicle. Thirty percent of kids who died from hyperthermia were left
unattended by an adult or gained entry into an unlocked vehicle and
became trapped and overcome by heat. “It takes only minutes for a child
to be at risk of death and serious, permanent injury in a hot car” . “Drivers must keep car doors locked and keys out of reach from
young children at all times
My point is this:

• If your car is in the drive, even if you don't have kids, LOCK IT UP! An innocent child may try to use your vehicle to hide from friends.
  
• Take a few extra seconds to check the vehicle thoroughly before you run into the store or workplace. Look for kids and pets. I have found stories of parents who thought their partner was taking the child to daycare so they "helped out" by putting the child in the other partners car.
  
• If you have nearby pond or pool that is not fenced in, even if it's one of those inflatable pools, you must be vigilant at all times. Not just for your children but others as well. It doesn't take more than a couple of inches of water for a child to drown.
  

Summer safety: Think about it and practice it!
If you have other summer "protectors" I welcome your input.

In the United States, approximately 300 children aged 14 and under drown every year in residential swimming pools, according to Safe Kids Tulsa and its "Safe Pools for Safe Kids" campaign website. And most of those children, who were under the supervision of one or both parents, had been missing for fewer than five minutes.

To illustrate how quickly a drowning can happen, Jana Ketchel, a Tulsa mother of two serving as co-chairwoman of the water safety committee for Safe Kids Tulsa, recalled her own niece's near-drowning in 2003. Along the way, there are Safe Kids' lessons on how danger could have been prevented:

Ketchel screamed for help. Her 2-year-old niece, Reagan Miller, was at the bottom of the backyard swimming pool, which was not protected by isolation fencing.

Isolation fencing has a locked, self-latching and self-closing gate that, according to Safe Kids, can prevent 50 percent to 90 percent of injuries and drownings.

Just a moment before — at least it seemed that way to Ketchel — the 2-year-old in the lime-green shirt and bloomers
had been playing near her aunt Jana, during a 2003 birthday party in Dallas.

Ketchel thought her sister, Jennifer Miller, was watching Reagan, while her sister thought Ketchel was watching her daughter in the social area around the corner from the pool. They weren't using the Water Watcher program, a Safe Kids moniker. Even if children know how to swim, which Reagan did not, an adult should be responsible for protecting all children in the pool area without any distractions. Instead of focusing on Reagan, the sisters were watching Jennifer Miller's son, Josh Miller, who has autism and is legally blind.

Drowning is the No. 1 cause of accidental death in children with autism, according to Ketchel.

Safe Kids recommends keeping swimming children under the age of 4 within touching distance, even with children who aren't proficient swimmers. It also warns parents to not let their children use water wings, floaties or donuts as flotation devices.

If a child cannot fully swim independently, parents should use a U.S. Coast Guard-approved personal flotation device.

Because the partygoers, including Reagan, already were outside, alarms on the house doors and windows, which Safe Kids recommends, would have been of no use. Nor would have a key-operated motorized pool cover, since there wasn't one on site.

Ketchel only realized Reagan was in jeopardy after she saw the birthday girl, her 3-year-old niece, Alyssa Acker, look into the pool and say, "What's the baby doing?"

If a child goes missing, according to Safe Kids, check the pool first.

Once Ketchel went around the corner to investigate what her niece was talking about, Ketchel, who was holding her cousin's newborn son, Jake Acker, in her arms, saw Reagan at the bottom of the pool. If the pool had had a floating alarm, or one mounted on the side of the pool, it might have alerted the adults when Reagan silently slipped into the water.

Seeing Reagan at the bottom of the pool, Ketchel set her nephew on the deck and jumped in to scoop her niece's seemingly lifeless body from the water.

A neighbor, who heard Ketchel's scream, was quickly on the scene to give the child CPR.

CPR instructions should be kept poolside, according to Safe Kids, as should a telephone to dial 911.

Reagan ended up on life support for five days. But, miraculously, she not only survived, the 8-year-old living in Jenks has no lasting physical and mental impairment.

In the aftermath of Reagan's near-drowning, Ketchel purchased her current home, which has a backyard pool. Initially, Ketchel and her husband considered covering the pool, but once she learned life-saving tips from Safe Kids, and other sources, she felt comfortable.

Recently, as Ketchel's two children and her 2-year-old nephew, Logan Sollars-Foley, played in her pool, Ketchel said: "My biggest tip is know that it can happen to you. Don't think that just because you're good at watching your kids that you won't be distracted just for a minute. Never let your children swim unattended, no matter how old they are."

With the official onset of the summer season
comes the official onset of the swimming season. Authorities are urging
caution for parents with children younger than 12 and even teenagers
and adults who might not be good swimmers.

Drownings can happen in as little as 30 seconds and
are silent -- someone who is drowning does not splash or scream for
help, unlike on TV and in the movies. In 70 percent of cases in which a
toddler drowned, one or both parents were nearby.

In 2008-09, there were 27 drownings and reported
near-drownings in swimming pools and hot tubs in Hennepin County,
compared to 14 drownings and near-drownings in lakes and rivers.

Here are some tips from the Hennepin County
Sheriff's Office and Life Time Fitness to keep yourself and your family
safe:
PAY ATTENTION



• A responsible adult must focus on children when
they are in or near the water.

• The assigned adults should not be talking on a
cell phone, reading a magazine or closing their eyes for sunbathing.

• Parents and caregivers should rotate this
responsibility to have a fresh set of eyes on the swimmers.

• Active supervision is needed even when there are
lifeguards on duty and even when children are wearing life jackets.
SAFETY MEASURES



• Teach your children to swim, starting as early as
age 1, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

• The American Red Cross recommends that
inexperienced swimmers wear life jackets in swimming pools.

• Do not rely on water wings or other flotation
devices.

• Learn CPR.

• Keep safety equipment near swimming pools, such as
a shepherd's hook and a phone to call for help.

• Check drain covers and learn about drain-cover
safety.

• Maintain fencing, alarms and barriers around
pools.

• If a child is missing, first search any area of
water.