Accidents happen in childhood, despite your best childproofing and safety efforts. Here's a list of some common childhood emergencies and accidents and the places they're likely to happen.
Common childhood accidents
- Burns, are one of the most common childhood accidental injuries. These include sunburns, electrical burns, and burns caused by stoves, lamps, matches, lighted cigarettes, and fireplaces. Other dangers include hot liquids and steam from a pan, cup, or hot water heater. Burns from bathwater are also common, especially if your water heater is set higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Poisoning from ingesting medicines, shampoo, aftershave, perfume, vitamins, cleaning products, and from exposure to gas appliances such as stoves and heaters.
- Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death among children, and it can happen in bathtubs, toilets, buckets, swimming pools, and areas of open water.
- Head injuries caused by falls from highchairs, beds, furniture, stairs, slippery floors, and play equipment.
- Choking on food, toys, batteries, bottle caps, coins, balloons, or other small objects.
- Strangulation caused by necklaces, drawstrings on clothes, baby headbands, strings, ties, and ribbons as well as cords on toys, household appliances, window blinds, and other fixtures.
- Nose injuries caused by running into stationary objects, falling on a hard surface, or deflecting a flying toy (or the fist or foot of another child).
- Items stuck in a nostril or ear, like small stones, chewable vitamins, pebbles, and peas.
- Cuts and scratches caused by sharp fingernails (either your baby's own or some other child's), pets, sharp objects (like knives, appliances with blades, and glass or other breakables), sharp edges of furniture, and sticks and other pointed objects outside.
- Fractures and sprains caused by hard falls and, as your child enters the toddler years, by playing energetically. Children tend to break bones more easily than adults because they have soft areas near the end of each bone called growth plates.
- Contusions—bruises under the skin—caused by bumps and falls.
- A pulled elbow, caused by picking up your child by one arm, jerking his arm forcefully, or swinging him around by the arms. The forearm bone can slip out of the elbow joint and sometimes slip back without medical attention.
- Eye injuries caused by dust, sand, chemical sprays, or other types of foreign matter in the child's eye.
- Falls from infant seats, highchairs,changing tables, walkers, and stairs.
Places to watch out for:
- Cribs, which can be a risk for pinched fingers and limbs, strangulation (from crib toys that have string, cords, or ribbons), and suffocation under blankets and pillows. Drop rails can also suffocate and strangle, and crib bumpers are associated with SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
- Cars with improperly installed car seats, or when a child is accidentally left in a locked car, which causes dangerous overheating.
- Windows, which children can fall from or get strangled in cords.
- Bathrooms, which are the main places for slips on wet surfaces, bumps and scrapes on bathroom fixtures, and cuts from shaving devices. A baby can drown in an inch of water, so be vigilant when your child is in the bath and be sure to keep the toilet off limits (unless you're supervising).