Labor Day weekend is upon us. which signals the end of summer, but still allows us a nice three day weekend to enjoy. With every other major summer holiday, child safety is something that we shouldn’t forget in all of the fun and revelry that surrounds three day summer weekends. KRGV in Texas reminds us of the usual summer safety tips regarding children:
With the Labor Day weekend approaching, the Department of Family and Protective Services urges all Texans to guard against two of the biggest causes of death for infants and toddlers during hot weather: accidental drowning and hot car deaths.
Already 72 children have drowned in Texas this year, more than any other year since DFPS began its unofficial count in 2005. Also, there have been six hot car deaths in Texas so far this year.
"Each of these tragedies could have been prevented, simply by not leaving children alone, near water or in vehicles," said Sue Milam, Deputy Commissioner for DFPS. "Children should never be left unsupervised for any period of time, near water or in any vehicle because the results can be devastating. If you can’t see them, you can’t save them!"
In hot weather, a closed vehicle can reach lethal temperatures in just a few minutes. Most children who perish in overheated vehicles are in the back seat, buckled in child safety seats.
"Always look before you leave a vehicle," Milam said. "When a child is in the back seat, it is a good idea to put a purse or briefcase there, too. Or keep a stuffed animal in the car seat, and when the child is there put the stuffed animal in the front seat. Those are both good reminders."
Texas is one of only 14 states which make it illegal to leave a child unattended in a vehicle. In Texas, it is against the law if a person leaves a child younger than seven years of age in a vehicle longer than five minutes.
For more information about water safety for children, and the dangers of hot cars for children, see seeandsave.org.
Communications powerhouse AT&T has set up a new program to help educate children on safety issues. From FoxBusiness.com:
Through the storybook adventures of iKeepSafe’s Internet safety character, Faux Paw the Techno Cat, elementary students grades 1-5 will learn about online safety, with emphasis on cyber-bullying awareness for fifth graders. D.A.R.E. officers will visit classrooms and present animated movies and books to students, then engage in educational exercises. AT&T will later join D.A.R.E. officers at community forums, where local residents and parents can learn about online safety and how they can keep their families safe online.
"Ninety percent of tweens report they have used the Internet by the time they are nine years old," said Brent Olson, AT&T assistant vice president of Public Policy. "That’s why it’s important for online safety education efforts to reach elementary-school-aged children, before they become active online users."
"It’s equally important for parents, families, and communities to understand the current challenges involved in keeping their children safe online, whether over the computer or over the cell phone — which every parent of a texter knows is quickly becoming the primary mode of communication for today’s tweens and teens," Olson added. "We are excited to join with iKeepSafe and D.A.R.E to bring these important messages to local schools and communities."
A great idea in the form of “Tweet 4 Missing Kids” is a great way to quickly spread information about missing children and Amber Alerts. Here’s how you can participate:
Every 40 seconds, somewhere in the world, a child is reported missing. Unfortunately, many of those missing will never be heard from again.
But thanks to the "magic of Twitter", the search for a missing child can begin literally around the world in just seconds, greatly increasing the chances of the child being found safe. Here’s how you can help.
1. Follow tweet4missing on Twitter to receive missing children and Amber alerts.
2. Retweet the alerts you get from tweet4missing to your followers with the hashmark #t4mk included in the tweet so it will show up in our Summize and Twemes public timelines.
3. If you hear of an Amber alert or missing child report, send a tweet about it to your followers and include, @tweet4missing. We will then forward your report to all of our followers.
4. If possible, please add tweet4missing’s Twitter, Summize, or Twemes RSS feed to your blog or website.
Professional help is on the way for communities who ever have any missing children or Amber Alerts issued. Many communities around the country are now starting what is called CART, or Child Abduction Response Team.
The 10-member Child Abduction Response Team leaves today for a week of training in San Francisco. The U.S. Department of Justice is paying for the training, airfare, lodging and materials.
The Pierce County [in the Tacoma, Washington area] contingent will be one of several CART-trained groups throughout the country. If certified by the Justice Department, it will be the only activated and certified team in the state, Troyer said.
The concept was developed after the abduction of an 11-year-old girl in Florida in 2004. Officials working that case discovered they needed trained experts to respond immediately, assist the lead law enforcement agency and bring additional resources to the effort.
The CART training is designed to provide team members with resources and tools that can be useful when a child is abducted. The training includes a tabletop exercise during which the team is evaluated for its response and performance in an abduction scenario.
Pierce County’s team is comprised of two sheriff’s detectives, a search-and-rescue specialist, a forensics officer, the county’s Amber Alert coordinator, two public information officers, a deputy prosecutor, a victim-witness coordinator and a sheriff’s supervisor.
Once trained, the team will be able to assist any law enforcement agency that needs help responding to the abduction of a child. The CART team would provide support, pull in other resources and provide expertise to the investigating agency, Troyer said.
Having these trained teams in place is just another fantastic step in keeping children as safe as possible.
How young is too young for a child to be dropped off at the mall unsupervised? Some say 11 years old is old enough, but others disagree. From Newsday.com’s Parental Guidance column:
Parental Guidance can’t tell you whether you’re too old-fashioned, but we can tell you that you’re in good company. Det. Sgt. Anthony Repalone, a spokesman for the Nassau County Police Department, agrees with you.
"I’m a parent myself, and I can tell you that I think an 11-year-old is too young to be unsupervised in a large public venue such as a mall," Repalone says. "I think it’s common sense, if you ask me."
Repalone emphasized that he’s speaking for himself, not the police department. He has a 14-year-old daughter, and he didn’t start letting her go to the mall with friends until she was 13. In his opinion, an 11-year-old - boy or girl - isn’t mature enough to deal with situations that might arise.
As for the malls, they don’t seem to have any policy on how old a child should be to shop without parental supervision. "We don’t have any age policy," agrees Christiann Wallace, marketing director for Westfield South Shore in Bay Shore and Westfield Sunrise in Massapequa.
But Westfield malls do have a "code of conduct" that anyone entering the mall should follow regardless of age, she says. The code is posted on mall doors, she says, and includes such regulations as no loitering in groups larger than three and no horseplay. She says security guards regularly patrol the mall hallways.
How old do you think a child should be before being allowed to go to certain places unsupervised?
A rolling billboard in the Orlando, Florida area has been commissioned by the Kid Finders Network to help get the faces of missing children out to the masses. Since one in six children are found with the aid of just a simple photograph, the billboard could help many find their way back home.
The Center for Missing and Exploited Children lists 365 kids missing in Florida.
The founders of Kid Finders Network want to keep all the faces of the kids fresh in your mind with a rolling billboard that features a dozen missing children and adults.
Bryan Hayes and Mark Degner, classmates and friends, walked away from their Jacksonville middle school more than three years ago. They haven’t been seen since.
Family members of those on the billboard said they never give up hope.
"I tell you, that every place we go, I don’t care where it is, we are always looking. If we see someone that looks like either one of them, we’re looking," said Bryan’s grandmother Alene Hayes.
To see a video on the story, check out CFNews13.com.
As we roll into another school year with parents buying all of those items that their children might need for the new year, does your child have the proper backpack for their size? LessonTutor.com gives us “five steps to preventing backpack related injuries”:
- Ensure that your child’s backpack is sturdy and appropriately sized. Some manufacturers offer special child sized versions for children ages five to 10. These packs weigh less than a pound and have shorter back lengths and widths to prevent slippage.
- Consider more than looks when choosing a backpack. An ill-fitting pack can cause back pain, muscle strain or nerve impingement. To help distribute the load, look for packs with padded shoulder straps and waist straps.
- Ensure that the weight of your child’s pack does not exceed 15% of his or her body weight. Avoid overloading by prioritizing the items your child carries and eliminating unnecessary contents.
- Teach your child to pack his or her backpack by evenly distributing the contents throughout the pack.
- Insist that your child never carry a backpack over one shoulder. Both shoulder straps - as well as the waist strap - should be used at all times.
Do you trust your babysitter? A new study from iVillage.com indicates that some 25% of parents have had problems with babysitters in the past. Other findings include:
- 1 in 10 moms have discovered that a babysitter brought other people into their home without permission
- More than 1 in 10 mothers (12%) are not sure their babysitter could handle any sort of emergency situation involving their kids
- Nearly half (49%) of moms do not think their babysitter would be able to conduct CPR on a child in a medical crisis
- A third (33%) of mothers polled believe their babysitter would not know how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver if a youngster was choking
iVillage.com’s new site Momtourage aims to help parents connect with one another to help out with a laundry list of issues, including finding good babysitters.
The Amber Alert system covers a lot of ground when it comes to letting the public know a child is missing, but what about avenues it doesn’t cover? Nate Ritter, a web designer and programmer, decided to add another link to the chain and with a little bit of skill was able to implement a missing children feed through popular social networking site Twitter. Nate explains how it all got started:
What was your motivation for starting this project?
Nate Ritter: Living in California my wife and I are used to seeing traffic warnings and alerts about missing or endangered children displayed above the highways.
After the California wildfires in October 2007 and seeing how Twitter could easily get information to people’s cell phones, I thought it would be great to have these kind of messages sent to the public. It would help notify those people who aren’t on the highways, and could probably be faster too.
I was also motivated because my mom’s sister went missing quite a few years ago and hasn’t been seen since. The technology at that time wasn’t anything like it is now, but there’s still some missing pieces even today. I just wanted to connect those pieces because I saw the opportunity to help people.
To read the rest of Nate’s interview, check out this site.
Child safety site InstantAmber.com has several great safety checklists for you to
print out and keep, including these on summer safety. Included on the checklist are walking, playing, wheeling, and riding safe. From the walking safe section:
- I never let my child, if under age 10, cross the street alone.
- I know exactly where my child will be walking, who with, and when to expect him home.
- My child wears reflective materials and carries a small LED flashlight when it’s dark, at dawn, and at dusk.
To print out this checklist for your home, visit the PDF link here.