Tips, advice and resources for parents and teachers

How to Prevent Home Accidents

7/13/2014

Whether you live in a house, apartment or condo, the potential for household injuries lurk around every corner. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that more than 11,000 people die at home every year from unintentional injuries resulting from falls, fires, drownings, or poisonings. By safeguarding your home, you can help prevent household accidents.

Prevent falls

Install lights at the top and bottom of stairways. Make sure there is a stair rail.
Mount grab bars and use nonslip mats in bathtubs and showers.
Provide safety gates in homes with small children.
Put nonstick backing on all area rugs.
Remove all spills from floors at once.
Pick up all clutter on stairs and floors. Clear out any obstructions, debris or any other obstacles that create a potential falling hazard.
Repair any damaged stair steps. Fix torn carpeting, loose boards, or uneven steps.
Shovel snow and ice off of all walks and driveways.

Reduce potential fire damage.

Avoid putting flammable items on or near the stove.
Turn all pot handles in when cooking on a stove.
Stay in the kitchen at all times while cooking.
Prohibit smoking inside your home.

Minimize chances of drowning accidents.

Supervise young children in bathtubs or when they are near water.
Enforce water and pool safety rules with your children. Make sure they use flotation devices until they learn how to swim proficiently.
Empty all wading pools, buckets or other water receptacles when not in use.
Learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). According to the CDC, victim success rates were much higher when CPR was administered while waiting for paramedics to arrive.
Construct a four-sided, fully- enclosed and locked fence around all swimming pools.
Clear all pool areas of toys after use to discourage small children.

Minimize potential poisonings.

Ventilate all rooms when using cleaners and chemicals.
Keep all medications, chemicals and cleaners out of reach of children.
Dispose properly of all medications that have expired.
Remove all peeling and lead-based paints from your home.
Ensure that all gas appliances are installed and serviced by professionals.

Tips

Keep a list of emergency numbers in a highly visible location. Include poison control, doctors, and phone numbers of friends and family.
Install nightlights in the bedrooms of elderly and children to help prevent falls during the night.
Set your water heater's temperature to 120 F (50 C) to prevent scalding.
Turn off and unplug all appliances before leaving home.
Always keep a phone within reach in the event of a fall.
Close cabinets, drawers, and doors after use.

Article courtesy of Wikihow. Photo by Sarah Horrigan via Flickr.

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Bullying and Your Child

5/21/2014

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what to do about a bully or bullying victim

Teasing, some fighting and falling out is a normal part of school-age relationships, but a bully-victim relationship is different.
Bullies and bullied are both victims.

A bully may:

Tease or hit other children
Demonstrate a lot of angry behavior or displays of temper
Defy parents or teachers

A victim of bullying may:

Find it hard to join in with friends
Be taken advantage of or teased by other children
Show some helplessness or be easily upset
Be timid, shy or different in some way

If you think your child may be a bully

Teach him or her about respecting other people’s rights—don’t just assume your child will know this. Constantly stress how others feel, and how important it is not to do things that make other people feel bad. Try to teach your child to treat others as he or she would like to be treated.
Have firm rules that don’t accept mean or nasty behavior towards others.
Teach your child to negotiate. Use role play to teach him how to ask for things he wants rather than forcing his will on others.
Keep a record of bullying incidents. This will help to identify whether anything in particular is causing your child stress and setting him off.
Don’t use bullying tactics at home to make your child do what you want.
Make sure you’re positive about all of your child’s good, cooperative behavior.

If you think your child may be a victim of bullying

Explain that bullies are children who may be upset or sad, perhaps because of unhappy events at home.
Tell your child it’s not his fault and explain that no one deserves mean treatment.
Use role play to teach him how to handle incidents, examples include not showing you’re bothered or upset by teasing, saying firmly you don’t like it and walking away.
Explain there’s no shame in just keeping out of the bully’s way.
Listen and talk, take the time to listen to your child’s worries about the events in his day.
Be alert to when things seem to get worse - you may need to intervene.
Build self-esteem by finding activities your child can be good at.
Always praise your child, especially for acts of courage.
Don’t overprotect your child, as it may only make him feel more vulnerable and helpless.
Is your child dominated at home by siblings, for example? If so, maybe he’s used to being treated like a doormat.

What forms does bullying take?

Verbal—calling names, sarcastic remarks, and put-downs
Physical—hitting, pushing
Psychological—deliberately excluding from a group, spreading malicious stories
Threatening—demands for money or toys

Most bullying takes place in or near schools. If the bullying is serious, you may need to report it to the school. Most schools have a bullying policy and should take clear steps to do something about your complaint.

If you’re not satisfied, go to the school governors or to your local education authority. If the bullying is very serious, some parents opt to move their child to a different school for a fresh start, or decide to educate at home.

Even children in this younger age group may use text messages or the web—so be aware if your child has a mobile phone or uses the internet, that these forms of communication can extend bullying into the home or non-school time.

Originally published on http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/your_kids/primary_bullying.shtml

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A Home Safety Reevaluation

11/20/2013

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home safety tips for parents of babies and toddlers

Judy Lyden, Scripps Howard News Service

My grandson William is eight months old and standing on his own. Children are curious and will use all their senses to absorb information. William eats anything. The 24-pound tremendosaurus makes his way to his mother’s lap and opens his mouth for shoveling. If he could, he’d say, “Faster, Mom.”

William would pull a tablecloth to fetch a cookie, climb into the refrigerator to peruse goodies and into closets to forage. Funny? It could be, or it could turn tragic. Young children don’t understand, and many new parents are not watchful enough.
I’ve known children who drank liquid drain-clog opener and last night’s vodka punch and others who ate Mom’s deodorant. These are poisons for young children. It only takes a few seconds.

Periodic safety reevaluations of all homes are advisable. Re-evaluating your home is easy when you check the council’s Web site at http://www.homesafetycouncil.org
for tips.

Everyone loves a beautiful table of goodies. A lovely candelabra graces any table. A glass punchbowl filled with fruited red punch is a delight to guests. But the whole thing is a nightmare to mothers of children younger than three, especially when matches and lighters are left on the table. A large baby like William could have the entire spread on the floor in 30 seconds. Can you imagine the lighted candelabra igniting the tablecloth? Or glass shards injuring a curious child?
Are beautiful tables taboo? No, but leaving children unattended should be. Keep deep-fryers outside, and think carefully about oil displacement and the weight of your turkey
In a public place recently, I stepped on 50 milligrams of something that had fallen on the carpet. This is the kind of thing William will eat. Caring adults should keep pills in containers and take them in places where free-falls just won’t happen.
Scalding happens. Do you know how hot your water heater heats water? Little guests can scald themselves by turning only one spigot in the bathroom. For houseguests, think about turning down heaters to 120°F / 49°C or less.
A cup of hot tea or coffee is wonderful as the weather turns colder. When you boil liquids, use backburners, turn pan handles away from small graspers, and keep cups where small hands can’t reach. (Or make it so that young children are not allowed to cross into the part of the kitchen where the stove is.)
Mothers know that cleaning products should be kept in an over-the-head storage place. Child safety latches don’t always work. Buy the smaller size of products you use infrequently and lock them up after the first use. Buying more later is a better choice than risking the life of a child. While visiting others, don’t hesitate to close and remove anything that could present a hazard to a young child.
When entertaining friends with children younger than three, it’s a good idea to close bedroom and bathroom doors and to hook doors that open onto staircases. Baby gates keep a child in the room with his parents.
Children will explore windows. Make sure windows are locked and screens are pulled in place. Windows should be a parent-and-me activity. Wrap drapery cords with tape where little ones can’t reach.
Just in case, post local emergency numbers near every telephone. Type out the numbers and use package tape to make them neat and permanent.

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How to Prevent Home Accidents

Bullying and Your Child

A Home Safety Reevaluation

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