Omicron overwhelms emergency rooms and hospitals across the country. In the past week, an average of 20,269 people a day were newly admitted to hospital with COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the highest number of the Covid-19 pandemic so far. And that means people who have to go to the hospital for non-COVID reasons face huge delays, and some may even be turned away. So it’s about the worst time for your child to break into your medicine cabinet, run his head into a table, or stick a finger in an electrical outlet.
Every year, 9.2 million children have to go to the ER due to a unintentional injury. Fortunately, many of the accidents that have hurt children are preventable with a little neurotic alertness. These precautions are often inexpensive, simple, and can prevent freak accidents from sending your child to the hospital at the most inconvenient moments imaginable. Because it’s always a good idea to make your home childproof, but it’s especially smart to do during a COVID boom.
Below are 21 easy ways to reduce your child’s risk of accidental poisoning, choking, burns and more.
1. Anchor your furniture
Turning over bookshelves, wardrobes, TVs and other pieces of furniture can flatten children and cause serious injuries. In fact, they send 15,000 children to the ER per year. This list of the Academy of Pediatrics have tips on how to anchor your furniture.
2. Install plug protectors
Get rid of any chance that your toddler will stick their fingers in the sockets and get electrocution by installing plug protectors. Make sure they are toddler-resistant, as up to 100 percent of 2-year-olds can remove certain types of plug protectors that are not specifically designed to withstand finger-pointing fingers, according to Temple University research.
3. Install Window Stops of Guards
Window stops and guards prevent children from making a tumble at windows, especially from upper floors. Approximately 4,000 children aged 10 and under need treatment each year for injuries related to a window fallout, according to Stanford Child Health.
4. Cook on burners and remove stew buttons
Five people experience a stove-related injury every hour, and about 41 percent of injuries are in young people aged 19 or younger, according to a 2013 study. Kids are less likely to light up and burn themselves or make a fire when you cook on your stove’s back burners. Keep pot and pan handles turned back toward the wall so they do not draw hot liquid or food on themselves. When not in use, remove stove knobs or put a lid on it so your children can not turn on the stove without your knowledge.
5. Do not go sliding with your child
If they are not old enough to go down the slide alone, they should not go down there at all. If you slip on your lap with a child, they run the risk of a bone fracture, according to research from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
6. Do not store firearms at home
It is safest to keep firearms out of the house. But if you do have one at home, keep it downloaded and locked. Lock the bullets in a separate place. Accidental shooting deaths caused by children increased during the pandemic. From January to the end of August 2021, children caused 259 accidental shooting incidents, which ended in 104 deaths and 168 injuries, according to research by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
7. Hide your Stash
As weed becomes legal in more places, children end up in their parents’ dumb more often, and edible products are a major culprit, much research has shown, including a new study in JAMA network open. Many of the children who experience marijuana poisoning should go to the ER (call poison control if you are unsure). So go get a slot box, and be diligent in using it.
8. Lock up medicines, cosmetics and cleaning products
Anything that your child could possibly ingest and be poisoned from includes it, ideally in a place that your child cannot reach. Be especially wary of cosmetics and personal care products, which is the reason for most Poison Control calls for children under 6 – more than 109 000 in 2019. Cleaning products are responsible for the second highest number of calls, accounting for almost 101 000 for children in this age group, according to Poison control.
9. Cover Furniture Corners
Children tend to run around houses. The less likely they are to fall and hit their heads in a sharp table corner, the better. N ou study found that when it comes to ER visits for furniture-related injuries, coffee tables with sharp edges are usually involved.
10. Use wireless window blinds
Window blinds that require you to pull down a cord to move it are a risk of strangulation. One study found that nearly 17,000 children went to the emergency room over a period of 26 years for injuries from window blinds, and 271 died, CBS reported.
11. Install door stoppers
Avoid slamming fingers in locked doors with door stoppers. A report by the British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons found that 50,000 children and toddlers slam their fingers and hands in doors every year, and more than 1,500 need surgery.
12. Hide your plastic bags
About 25 children suffocate each year with plastic bags over their heads, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Keep them out of reach.
13. Screw on Battery compartments
A 2012 report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 1997 and 2010, more than 40,000 children in the ER were treated for battery-related injuries. Battery compartments must be screwed on to prevent children from accidentally getting and ingesting the batteries. Keep unused batteries out of reach, and be especially careful of button batteries.
14. Do not use tablecloths
Saint Luke’s Health System warns children to pull on the tablecloth and pull heavy objects on their head. Serious.
15. Gate your kitchen
The kitchen is full of dangers. Two-thirds of home fires start in the kitchen, and 350,000 people are injured by kitchen knives each year, according to Beaumont Emergency Hospital. If the setup of your home allows it, close your kitchen gate to prevent your child from getting into trouble.
16. Check your oven door
A 2001 study found that over a period of five years, 14 children were burned by oven doors severe enough to go to a burn referral center, and half of those children were burned by the outside of the oven. To prevent oven door from burning, switch off the oven immediately after using it, close the oven immediately after removing or inserting food, and check the outside temperature of the oven door to ensure that it is not too hot.
17. Close your toilet
As ridiculous as it may sound, the risk is real that your child could stick his head in the toilet, tilt and drown. Cheap and easy latches can prevent this. Each year, about 115 children drown in the home in non-pool water sources, including toilets, baths and buckets, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
18. Keep your hot water heater at 120 ° F
Or keep it even lower, to prevent burns. Between 2013 and 2017, more than 78,500 children aged 4 and under visited the ER for household appliance burns, according to the American Fire Association. Children’s skin is more sensitive and can burn more easily than adults’ skin. If you can not control the temperature of your hot water heater, use an anti-fire device on your sinks and bathtubs.
19. Place non-slip mats in the bathroom
Use them on the bathroom floor and in the bath to prevent them from falling on slippery ground. An estimated 51,132 children under the age of 15 were treated in non-fatal bathroom-related injuries in emergency departments in 2005, about 74 percent of those injuries were due to falls, one study found.
20. Limit the trampoline to one child at a time
Every year, about 100,000 children are injured by jumping on trampolines, and three-quarters of these injuries occur when more than one child jumps at a time, according to the Cleveland Clinic. So if you have a trampoline, limit the use to one child at a time. Or, to be as safe as possible, just do not get a trampoline.
21. Do yard work only
Keep the children indoors when gardening, especially when mowing the lawn. About 9,400 children are injured by lawn mowers each year, according to a 2019 study by Reuters.
