Playground safety tips: help reduce childhood injuries

Short of wrapping your child in bubble wrap and keeping him or her in a sterile environment, you can’t protect your child from all childhood injuries. You can, however, reduce the risks of injuries by making sure your environment is as safe as can be expected given the area and the area’s use.

Playgrounds are fun but they can also be where accidents happen. When my daughter was five years old, she fell off the monkey bars and broke her arm. It was a split second thing – her dad was right there, but accidents do happen. Might her arm not have been broken if there had been better padding underneath the apparatus? Maybe.

I’ve seen kids have to get stitches after getting smacked in the head with a swing and we’ve all seen children twist their ankles running across the grass. The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) reported that there were nearly 47,000 injuries on home playgrounds to children (under 15 years old) in the latest year that they had statistics. So – how do we keep these injuries to a minimum?

The Home Safety Council has a page with safety tips. They include ideas about positioning of playground equipment, padding for underneath, and the types of hazards to watch out for: Playground Safety

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, playground injuries, playgroud safety