Beware of Plug In Devices: They Can Put Your Family At Risk
Last updated on January 25th, 2016 at 10:52 am
Do you have a device that plugs in? Sure you do. Otherwise how are you reading this? The point is we all have devices that plug in around our home. Whether it’s a device such as a phone or tablet or a device to make a room smell better, it is a fact of life now that we plug a lot of stuff in. Some devices are plugged in and left there until they die and some devices are plugged and unplugged daily for recharging. While we have become used to this every day routine of plug and play and really don’t think much about it, it really does require a bit of thought given the fact that some of these chargers and batteries can get pretty hot and have been responsible for some horrific fires, emergencies, and even deaths.
By now I am sure we have all seen the videos on t.v or online with the new hover boards catching on fire out of nowhere and even causing damage to homes as well. When charging an electrical device there are some basic steps to keep in mind while doing so:
- Do not put the item on anything flammable like a bed or couch
- Do not put the item plugged in under anything flammable like a cloth or blanket for the same reason.
- Do not put furniture resting directly up against an outlet, whether something is charging or not. There are power surges and all it takes is one spark and the bed or couch can catch fire instantly.
- Do not wrap the charging cable with anything flammable. The cables can get hot as well and so can the wrap.
- When using scent devices that plug in, do NOT refill them with aftermarket liquid not specifically designed for the device.
- When possible, put all the devices charging on a surge protector.
- If you have any concerns about your outlets or electrical concerns, please contact a licensed electrician for assistance.
While the companies that make these different products all back their equipment, they all also stand together in warning the public that the cheap versions of their products from overseas have little of the safety designs in them to 
prevent these disasters, thus that is why they are so cheap. In other words, you get what you pay for.
While nothing is fool proof and accidents will happen, taking a quick look around your home and garage and seeing about those batteries that have been charging for days and weeks and that tablet charging on the bed, we can do our part to make sure that a little safety goes a long way.
Thank you and please be safe!
Photo credit: Urban Wheel – Flo Board / Swegway / Hoverboard / Rideable;Ben Larcey; CC license
A Question on Vehicle Booster Seats Answered
Last updated on December 5th, 2015 at 11:43 pm
Several years ago I wrote a post on booster seats (I’m 9 Years Old – Do I Really Still Need a Booster Seat?) about how my then 9 year old son didn’t want to keep 
using a booster seat in the car because none of his friends did anymore and he felt he was old enough to use the regular seat belt. The point of the article was that guidelines issued in 2011 recommended using a booster seat until a child reaches 4’9” tall (57 inches) and weighs between 80 and 100 pounds – generally in the range of 8-12 years of age. This continues to be one of our most read posts on the site and still gets occasional comments – which indicates the ongoing confusion and lack of clear laws and communication about what constitutes safe car travel for our older kids.
Recently one of our readers asked a very good question about my post – which warranted some extra research:
My car (Jeep Cherokee, older) has a bench seat in back, and the back of the seat is somewhat low. If my 8 year old son is not in a booster, his head and neck are against the seat and supported; in a booster, his shoulders, neck and head are above the seat back and completely unsupported. In a wreck, that booster would cause his neck to be snapped. I really hate that the law forces me to endanger him that way with the booster. Buying a new car isn’t an option, and I wish there were some sort of aftermarket option that was safe and crash-tested, which would allow the belt to fit him and keep him out of the booster. Suggestions?
To get an expert perspective on this issue, I turned to Stephanie Tombrello, LCSW, CPSTI, Executive Director of SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A. According to Tombrello, “if a parent has a vehicle with a low-back vehicle seat, the immediate recommendation is a high back booster. There are many options in every price range and with a variety of backs.” The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a recommended list of “Good Bets” for booster seats in 2015, many of which are high back models. Additionally, “for some children, the Dorel (Safety 1st) Incognito booster for children 60-120 lbs. can be low enough to allow for fitting the belt properly while not placing the child high in the vehicle,” says Tombrello.
If none of these options suit, parents can consider an alternative to booster seats – the Safe Traffic System RIDESAFER Travel Vest – which Tombrello also recommended. These vests, which are billed as the world’s first wearable child restraint system, reduce the load transferred to the child in a crash, thereby providing better safety. However, please note that these vests are limited to a weight of 80 pounds and height of 57 inches.
Virtually no US laws make it clear that children need booster seats until adult belts fit – and there’s little guidance to parents on how to determine fit. Tombrello cautions “that children must be able to pass the 5-Step Test before dispensing with a booster. The potential injuries to the bowel or stomach from the misplaced lap belt are significant.” See the box below for the steps to take to determine if and when your child can graduate to adult seat belts – and go to www.carseat.org for more information on protecting children and pregnant women in the car.
The 5-Step Test
1. Does the child sit all the way back against the auto seat?
2. Do the child’s knees bend comfortably at the edge of the auto seat?
3. Does the belt cross the shoulder between the neck and arm?
4. Is the lap belt as low as possible, touching the thighs?
5. Can the child stay seated like this for the whole trip?
How Can I Keep My Baby Safe During Hot Weather?
Last updated on July 31st, 2018 at 06:16 pm
Babies and young children can become ill during very hot weather. Their health can be seriously affected by:
Try these summer safety tips for keeping your child happy and healthy in the heat.
Sun Safety
Keep your baby cool and protect them from the sun.
- Babies less than six months old should be kept out of direct sunlight. Their skin contains too little melanin, which is the pigment that gives skin, hair and eyes their colour and provides some protection from the sun.
- Older infants should also be kept out of the sun as much as possible, particularly in the summer and between 11am and 3pm when the sun is at its strongest. If you go out when it’s hot, attach a parasol or sunshade to your baby’s pushchair to keep them out of direct sunlight.
- Apply a sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15 to your baby’s skin. Make sure the product also protects against both UVA and UVB rays. Many brands produce sunscreen specifically for babies and young children as these products are less likely to contain additives that might irritate the skin. Apply the suncream regularly, particularly if your child is in and out of the sea or paddling pool.
- Make sure your child wears a sunhat with a wide brim or a long flap at the back, to protect their head and neck from the sun.
Avoid Dehydration
Like adults, babies and young children need to drink plenty of fluids to avoid becoming dehydrated.
- If you’re breastfeeding your baby, you don’t need to give them water as well as breast milk. However, they may want to breastfeed more than usual.
- If you’re bottle feeding, as well as their usual milk feeds, you can give your baby cooled boiled water throughout the day. If your baby wakes at night, they’ll probably want milk. If they’ve had their usual milk feeds, try cooled boiled water as well.
You can be creative when trying to keep your child hydrated. If they’re over six months old and they get bored with water, try giving them a combination of very diluted fruit juice, ice cubes and homemade fruit juice lollies throughout the day. For older children, plenty of fruit and salad will also help keep their fluid levels up.
Keeping Cool
Follow the tips below to help keep your children cool and safe during hot weather.
- Playing in a paddling pool is a good way of keeping babies and children cool. Keep the pool in the shade during very hot weather and supervise the children carefully at all times.
- Run them a cool bath before bedtime.
- Keep your child’s bedroom cool during the day by closing blinds or curtains. You can also use a fan to circulate the air in the room.
- Keep nightwear and bedclothes to a minimum. If your baby kicks or pushes off the covers during the night, consider putting them in just a nappy with a single well-secured sheet that won’t work loose and cover their face or get entangled during the night.
- A nursery thermometer will help you monitor the temperature of your baby’s room. Your baby will sleep most comfortably when their room is between 16C (61F) and 20C (68F).
Further information:
- Dehydration
- Heat exhaustion and heatstroke
- Sunburn
- Child safety in the sun
- Summer health
- Summer safety for younger children
CPR Training Required for High School Graduation
Last updated on February 28th, 2018 at 11:40 am
I know it is summer and the last thing any of us want to think about is school and all the work our kids have to put in to graduate. If you are the parent of a high school student that is trying to figure out what courses will be best to take and what will be needed to ensure graduation then looking ahead to this upcoming school year and the growing movement of required CPR training in schools for graduation is a must. Currently 24 states have legislation that require high school students take the CPR training in the school to be eligible to graduate and many more states have pending legislation on the way.
The American Heart Association statistics tell us that every hour in the United States 48 people will suffer an out of hospital cardiac arrest and that 9 out of 10 of those people will not survive, however if proper CPR measure are begun by a trained bystander then the odds of that person surviving can double or even triple; and since these people are suffering a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital this means they will be having them in every day situation like being at work, home, school, and places where care would normally take too long. Having many more trained people in these everyday places can have an immediate impact and help save lives now. The program that is teaching the CPR program in the schools is called “CPR IN SCHOOLS” and is monitored by the American Heart Association and can be found online at www.heart.org/cprinschool.
The bottom line is that there is never a bad time to learn CPR because you have no idea when you will need to use it and whether or not your children are required to take it in school, it is always a worthy investment that can pay dividends long after your children have graduated and who knows, the life they save may be yours.
Thank you and Have a Great and Safe Summer.
Photo credit: Northern Ireland Executive; CC license
Children and Choking: Prevention and What to Do
Last updated on September 4th, 2015 at 09:00 pm
the Heimlich maneuver
Recently, in the classes I have been teaching there has been an overwhelming amount of questions regarding choking in children and how to prevent it and what to do when it happens? With choking being one of the top 5 killers of children in the United States, there is never a bad time to cover choking in children and what we as parents and caregivers can do to prevent and deal with the situation.
Let’s face it, children choke on almost anything. If you have children or are a caregiver to children then you know that children love to put new things into their mouths and taste test everything and the younger the child, the more stuff they will put in there without any regard for what it might be. The questions of how to prevent choking in children has a lot to do with age. What I tell new parents or soon to be parents and grandparents are to go home. This may sound silly but home is where the battlefield is. I tell them to go home and see their home from a new perspective. We as adults see the world from very high up, our perspective tends to make us look down on most things in our homes. A small child or infant will see the home from an entirely different perspective looking up at most things in the home. So what I recommend to the adults is to go home and lie down on the floor in every room and see what an infant might see. It’s a whole new world down there with things like splinters under wood furniture, nail heads or staples sticking out, strings from fabrics, and the most important thing of all being that the infant or small child will find everything you have lost under all your furniture, including pills, paperclips, popcorn, you name it. So as I said before, go home and gain a child’s perspective on your home.
Preventing choking in older children has mainly to do with food and how it is prepared and eaten. We have all said “don’t stuff your face” or “chew your food “a thousand times, but the preparation is where we can make a significant difference. What I tell parents is to cut, cut and cut again. With foods like hot dogs, grapes, fruit and many other solid foods, cutting beforehand is the key. Other, lesser known culprits like popcorn, peanuts and even cereals can be broken down by simply putting them in a bag beforehand and crushing them a little bit to break them down.
What to do when the choking begins are the most important and the most frightening, but thinking is the key.
If you have an infant that starts choking at home, the first step should be to bring the infant to you by taking them out of whatever apparatus they are in at the moment, highchair or bouncer for example. Secondly, you should scream for anyone you are with to call 911 and inform them of a choking infant, or you may have to bring baby to the phone and call 911 while relieving the choking yourself. Even if the choking was sudden and the event ends right away, at least help is on the way. The third thing should be to be seated and position the infant face down with the legs straddling your arm and your hand on the infants jaw, all while keeping the baby’s head pointed down in order to use gravity should anything come out or loose. You will use the palm of your free hand to strike down, but towards the head of the infant, between the shoulder blades 5 times. Then you will put your free hand on the back of the baby’s head and sandwich the baby and flip them over to your other leg and then place your two fingers between the baby’s nipples and do 5 chest compressions or chest thrusts. You will repeat this until the object is removed, the baby starts breathing, or the baby becomes unconscious.
Should the baby go unresponsive, lie the baby down on a hard, flat surface and begin cpr on the baby.
Choking for the older child is much the same as choking for an adult, just on a smaller scale. If you notice an older child that appears to be choking, you can ask them “are you choking? “ and if given confirmation that they are choking then you will kneel down behind the child, so you can be roughly the same height, and use the Heimlich maneuver, (see the picture at the top of the page) the same one you use on adults, to relieve the choking. If it is unsuccessful and the older child becomes unresponsive then lay the child down on a hard, flat surface and begin cpr.
The most important times in this event are the identification of choking, the sooner the better, and the call to 911, again the sooner the better. There are a million things anyone can choke on and our homes are where most of the action takes place so please take a little time and do some prevention work around our homes and as always, I recommend taking an official American Heart Association CPR class in your area that will cover the CPR and choking (click here to find a course) and give you ample practice time so you can be better prepared.
Thank you and be safe.
Parents, When Does Your Child Really Need A Life Jacket?
Last updated on August 29th, 2015 at 10:01 pm
When you think of a life jacket, that sturdy vest that keeps you afloat, you probably think of large boats. While it is true that you should ALWAYS wear a life jacket when you are on a boat, a life jacket has far more uses for keeping you and your children safer around water. Today we are going to talk about when to wear a lifejacket, what constitutes a real life jacket, and how to convince the (usually male) disbelievers to wear a lifejacket.
Let’s start with the obvious, wearing a life jacket on a boat, because too many people still leave the life jacket sitting next to them ‘in case I need it’. 70% of boating fatalities result from drowning, and 85% of those who drown are not wearing a life jacket. It doesn’t matter if you have a little Sunfish sailboat for tooling around a small lake, a ski boat, a fishing boat, or a 90 foot ocean-going Oyster, if you end up in the water unexpectedly because you trip, are hit by the boom, get knocked by a wave, are dizzy from sunstroke, or any other unexpected accident, your odds of drowning are really high. Even if you see the person go in, think for a minute how hard it is to see a wet head in the water if they aren’t also wearing a life jacket, much less how difficult it is to retrieve the person when they are shocked, cold, and maybe injured. Even if you can get back to them and haul them onboard in a matter of minutes, they may already have started the process of drowning. My mom rule is that if you are above deck, you have a life jacket on, even docked or at anchor. And if it’s rough weather, it stays on, period. The new life jackets are light and comfortable, it’s not a hardship. Granted, if you are on one of those huge passenger ferries or a cruise ship, no one expect you to parade around all day in a lifejacket, but do know where they are kept and if you have a child, know where the child-sized jackets are stored. For your own recreational boating, click here to learn about Coast Guard approved lifejackets, the only type of lifejacket you should ever trust with your child’s life, and your own life. If you are traveling, call ahead and ask, many places have life jacket loaner programs, so you don’t necessarily have to invest yourself.
What most parents don’t think about is when lifejackets should be used off of boats. If you have an inexperienced or weak swimmer, a very young child, or anyone with physical or mental limitations, have them wear a life jacket whenever they are near water. If you are in a pool and at arm’s length, it isn’t necessary, but for a day at the beach or the lake, at one of those fabulous big resort pools, or even if you just have more than one child to watch, a life jacket adds a layer of safety and peace of mind. It is almost impossible for anyone, even vigilant lifeguards, to see beneath the surface of rough water, so better to keep the head above water in the first place. Children forget they can’t swim, they jump in or walk until they are over their heads, or just get tired, and next thing you know, they are bobbing just beneath the surface.
You may be thinking, I’m covered, I picked up a great floatation suit at the store, or always have those inflatable arm bands in our bag. First anything inflatable. If it inflates, it deflates. Those inflatable arm bands are still sold everywhere, because the water safety field hasn’t gotten the message out there, but if you have some, do me a favor, pick up the scissors and drive a hole right through them before you put them in the garbage. Not only can they deflate, especially at a beach or in rough water, but they really limit a child’s arm motion if they are trying to swim. I’m all in favor of having fun in the water, and inflatable rafts and rings and toys can be great fun, but they are for fun, not for safety. Inflatable arm bands aren’t even for fun. If you have a question about any floatation suit or vest you have, see if there is a label saying it is Coast Guard approved. Or go directly to the Coast Guard website to learn more. A true life jacket can turn an unconscious person onto their back so their face is not in the water.
There is the gray area of a child who is over-confident in the water but doesn’t have solid swimming skills, or has the skills but not the confidence. For this child, you really want them in the water practicing their skills, under your supervision, but a life jacket may be too restrictive. My go-to is still the SwimFin. It’s a shark-shaped fin that straps securely around a child’s middle. A UK-product, it has passed the European Union flotation regulations, except that it is still not a life jacket, because it won’t keep someone on their back if they are unconscious. I would never use SwimFin in the ocean or any other open water that has a current, a tide, or waves, but for a pool when you want to play more safely, it is absolutely brilliant. It changed one of our vacations from my daughter saying ‘I’m bored, I want to go back to the room’ to my having to beg to get her out of the pool at the end of the day. I still kept an eagle eye on her, but it gave her the freedom to practice her strokes and jumps. Her swimming skills and confidence improved exponentially and appropriately on that trip. Major bonus, all the kids at the pool wanted to wear one because it looks so cool.
Finally, how to you convince the ‘I’m too cool to wear a life jacket’ members of your family (statistically the males). For them, I have two videos to recommend. Both tried and tested within my family. For the younger males, have them watch this ‘Heroes Wear Life Jackets’ video that features Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers. My son said he was definitely more likely to wear a life jacket after watching – because it makes life jackets cool.
For the older males, here is an award-winning interactive video that simulates what happens when you are knocked into the water. You have to keep scrolling to stay alive. I admit I couldn’t watch for long, but the guys I work with said it got pretty graphic and frightening. But, it did convince one of the most recalcitrant non-jacket-wearing avid boaters I know to start wearing a life jacket. I didn’t push or nag, just forwarded the link in an email and said, ‘thought you might find this interesting’. Sometimes all it takes to change behavior is a slight nudge in the right direction and someone else explaining why they need to change.
