Safety for Children

The unthinkable happened when a car flipped over recently and injured a child who’s child safety seat wasn’t properly installed. A local news station from Washington state reports:

Police say a child safety seat that was inside a car that rolled over several times Friday morning was not properly installed.

An 11-month-old boy was thrown from that car as it rolled over just after midnight in the 800 block of SW 356th Street.

Federal Way Police say a white Mercury Sable was traveling east on Southwest 356th Street when the driver lost control. The vehicle rolled over several times before landing on its roof in the middle of an intersection. The infant was ejected from the car and suffered critical head injuries. The driver, a 30-year-old man, was also injured and had to be extricated from the car.

Many communities have child safety seat checkpoints where you can bring your car in to make sure the seat is properly installed. Check with your local police station or firehouse for checkpoints in your area.

The state of Florida is considering eliminating the Amber Alert system, claiming that they do not have the budget for it. Also up for elimination from the state programs is the sex offender registry. Both programs are run by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement which the state could require to cut it’s budget by $18 million.

"We’ve lost 56 positions in the last year and we know any additional cuts are going to be in our key service area," FDLE spokesperson Heather Smith told WOKV. "Anything beyond this point is certainly going to have an effect on public safety."

The Amber Alert program gets out the word on abducted children statewide by issuing emergency broadcast warnings and utilizing electronic highway signs. The state’s sex offender registry notifies 44,000 Floridians who signed up for alerts if a sex offender moves in their neighborhood.

The cuts are just proposals. If lawmakers decide on less severe budget reductions, the Amber Alert and sex offender registry would very likely keep their funding.

If you are looking for an interesting parenting site with not only good child safety tips, but overall tips on kids, be sure and check out ParentHacks.com. They have all sorts of fun information submitted by parents on a vast array of topics from how to distract your children while combing their hair to common household items that can be used as child safety devices. Check out this great tip from a parent about administering medicine in the middle of the night:

This hack was obvious to me and my husband, but when my friend just sent me an email and said her four year-old had to go on breathing treatments every 4 hours and that waking up a preschooler at 4am was not easy, it dawned on me that maybe it wasn’t so obvious. When my son was under 1 year old and had to do breathing treatments we let him sleep.  I mean, all he has to do is breathe to get the treatment, so why wake him up?

If you are looking for little parenting tidbits, be sure and visit ParentHacks.com for all kinds of fantastic information and ideas.

November is here and already we are seeing commercials and advertisements that remind us Christmas is just around the corner. With the holiday season comes traveling with our families to other parts of the country to visit friends and relatives. If you are traveling with a baby, Examiner.com has some good child safety tips that we must not forget about when traveling with a little one.

Staying with relatives

• Make sure you talk with your relatives before you get there about what child safety precautions they’ve taken.
• Remind them that little hands are grabby, even if they’re on their best manners.
• Ask nicely that everything valuable be moved to high points in the house or out of areas where the kids will be.
• Make sure to remind your host when you arrive about moving objects that you see that are sure to be targeted by your child.

Also be sure and check out their list for staying in a hotel.