Tips for keeping children safe in the 'deadliest days of summer'

Yobro10, iStock / Getty Images Plus

By Sherri Hannan
University of Kentucky

The season from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day is known as the "100 deadliest days of summer." The summer months, while a highlight for kids, can also expose them to greater injury risk. Kids spend time in the water, walking or riding bikes in their neighborhood and just enjoying their summer break from school. All that can change quickly without the use of safety devices or following safe practices.

Here are some tips and trips to keep kids safe while they have fun in the sun.

Outdoors:

• Apply sunscreen when kids will be outdoors, even on cloudy day. Reapply every two hours and after your child has been swimming.
• Kids are at a higher risk for dehydration. Combined with the summer heat, the lack of water can lead to muscle cramps, heat exhaustion or heatstroke. Have them drink water before, during and after physical activity.
• Fireworks are a fun way to celebrate, but every year, more than 3,000 children under the age of 15 visit the emergency department because of fireworks. Give children glowsticks instead of sparklers, and always keep fireworks away from children. If possible, attend a public fireworks display instead, and leave the firepower to the professionals.
• Keep a first aid kit handy, and give your children a few first aid basics such as when to use a bandage, what a tick might look like and how to spot poison ivy.

In the water or on a boat:

• Actively supervise children in and around water, giving them your undivided attention.
• Teach children to swim with an adult. Older, more experienced swimmers should still swim with a partner every time. From the first time your kids swim, teach children to never go near or in water without an adult present.
• Swimming aids such as water wings or noodles are fun toys for kids, but they should never be used in place of a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket.
• A large portion of boating accidents each year involve alcohol consumption by both boat operators and passengers. To keep you and your loved ones safe, it is strongly recommended not to drink alcoholic beverages while boating.

Bicycling:

• Wear a properly fitted helmet. It is the best way to prevent head injuries and death. Learn how to properly fit a helmet for your children in seconds.
• Ride on the sidewalk when you can. If not, ride in the same direction as traffic as far on the right-hand side as possible.
• Use hand signals and follow the rules of the road. Be predictable by making sure you ride in a straight line and don’t swerve between cars.
• Wear bright colors and use lights, especially when riding at night and in the morning. Reflectors on your clothes and bike will help you be seen.
• Ride with your children. Stick together until you are comfortable that your kids are ready to ride on their own.

Surgeon general says Americans need to walk more, and U.S. needs more walkable neighborhoods

Americans should spend more time walking, and communities should be equipped with walking areas to make that possible, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in a report released on Wednesday.

"Maybe this sounds like obvious advice, a health tip right up there with admonitions to eat right and wear sunblock," Emily Badger writes for The Washington Post. "But for much of the last century, the federal government has backed a different idea—cars running on cheap fuel and fast asphalt should carry us everywhere—that has largely proved incompatible with walking." (Library of Congress photo: Thomas Circle in Washington, D.C., in 1920, when most of the traffic was pedestrian)

The University of Virginia's Peter Norton, who has studied the history of transportation, told Badger, "If the surgeon general had called for people to exercise more, that would be just another predictable announcement. But he called for walking. That puts him up against a long history of official discouragement of walking."

One of the main problems is that nearly one-third of Americans live in neighborhoods that lack sidewalks, Badger writes. "The federal government subsidized the construction of postwar suburban subdivisions so heavily dependent on the car they had little use for sidewalks. The government paved the highways that enabled people to live there, and kept low the gas taxes that made commuting 30 miles a day affordable. Government engineers came, over time, to think of roads as the domain solely of automobiles—and of pedestrians as an impediment to them."

Another problem is that many people live far enough away from work, grocery stores and other conveniences that walking is not possible, Badger writes. Also, narrow rural roads can discourage walkers. In an age where cars take people everywhere they need to go, many people have grown out of the habit of having to walk much more than 300 to 400 feet to get anywhere.

Murthy told reporters, "In the last few decades we have lost touch with physical activity." Badger writes, "This is true in many ways, in school days that no longer include recess, or in jobs that no longer demand physical labor. But it is primarily true in how we've built (or rebuilt) the world around us. And research is starting to show the health consequences. Communities designed around more compact, walkable street grids—places that have what the surgeon general calls 'connectivity'—have been correlated in research with reduced rates of obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease (they also have fewer fatal car crashes, another public health problem). One study of a million residents in Toronto found that people in less walkable neighborhoods were more likely to develop diabetes."