It’s back to school season again, how will your child stay safe? For every educator, teacher, parent and adult who has access to a child, what should you teach young children about safety to avoid sad news?

Stranger Danger 

Children should be taught not to collect things from strangers and not to follow them. Teach them to scream and make it obvious to anyone around them if a stranger tries to take them.

Road Safety

Children shouldn’t cross the road alone. They should be taught about the zebra crossing. Teach them not to play on the roads as they go to school or on their way home.

Playground
Let children know that people could get really sick from injury on the playground. Therefore, they should avoid being violent or rough during playtime.

Spills

Spills lead to falls which can hurt children. Therefore teach them to clean up spills as soon as they see them or report the location to an adult.

Stairs

Teach them to hold handrails on stairs. Let them know that stairs are not play areas and so they shouldn’t play there.

Be a brother’s keeper

Teach them to help protect their friends and classmates by teaching them these safety tips. This is important because if another child makes the unsafe choice, your child might suffer from the consequences too.

Have a safe school term!

Image credit: The Adventures of Muna

As part of its objective to intentionally groom a safety conscious generation, the Safety Chic project – an arm of Ulomka Multi solutions Ltd responsible for raising safety consciousness in people has concluded their East, West, North (EWN) nationwide safety tour, which began on the 28^th September and ended on October 12, 2017.

The tour is in line with their Corporate Social Responsibility programme – Train Them Young Initiative (2TYI) which entails school visitation to teach young people about Health and Safety, to boost Health Safety Environment (HSE) advocacy and increase awareness.

Read the rest of our work featured here

I’ve seen lots of really young children sit on the front seat beside the driver. I’ve had to educate children when I visit them in schools that they need to be a certain age before they should be allowed to sit there. But parents should know these things too. Recently, a parent reached out to me because she was worried that more parents aren’t aware of the implications.

According to Tom Hurd, the spokesperson of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an unrestrained occupant in an outboard rear seat is 26% less likely to die in a crash than an unrestrained front seat occupant. Move this occupant to the centre rear seat and  the same unrestrained passenger is 37% safer than the unrestrained front seat occupant. So, the centre seat at the back is safer. Over half of car crashes are from frontal impact. So you are safer the farther you are away from the crash due less impact. This is one of the reasons kids are safer on the back seat.

However, irrespective of seat position, children are to be strapped and seated at the back. While babies should be strapped in their car seats always.  There are actually functional seatbelts on car seats behind the driver. So, it’s always surprising to see kids on the loose there. If you, the parent is strapped, why shouldn’t your kids be too? Teaching them to belt up from a young age means that when they graduate to the seat beside the driver or the driver seat they’d always put on their seatbelts. It also means that during sudden car movements, the gravity of harm to the child is reduced.

Another reason children shouldn’t be in the front seat is because their bodies cannot yet withstand the force with which the airbag is released. Their body size means they are more likely to be propelled forward than most adults and this is what increases impact as they hit the airbag. Did you know that in Nigeria and most countries only children 12 years and above should sit on the front seat? It is not even allowed to carry the child or a baby on your lap on that seat. Therefore we need to make this adjustment in order to keep them safe.

I also believe that it is not too early to teach them to be calm in moving vehicles as their actions could lead to accidents because  of distraction. Let us consciously teach them safety habits  because it would have a ripple effect on Society. In my book The Adventures of Muna,  a chapter handles aspects of road safety. You should check it out.

By the way, did you know it is against the law to transport children under 16 at the back of a Pick Up truck?

In security, access control is about restricting entry to a place. It could be for residential estates or certain work areas. However, relating this to the home front, access control could mean managing how strangers enter your home or how people gain access to your children. This means we need to put safety precautions in place, otherwise we would allow danger into our comfort zones.

Access control for families could be done through human or mechanical resources or a combination of both. This article would focus more on the human aspect. As a result of recent happenings in our society, children getting abducted from home and school, children being raped at home and other vices, it is now important to have a family safety plan. In my book, The Adventures of Muna, one of the chapters talked about handling strangers. It is important for parents to have and communicate family safety plans to their children.

As a parent, here are some things you can do to reduce stranger access to your kids:
1) Ensure you have good physical barriers -doors and windows – at home. Teach kids that they shouldn’t open the door until they know for certain who is there. If a stranger comes to the door and the kids have done a good job of locking it, then that door must be strong enough to withstand pressure otherwise the aim is defeated.
2) Teach your kids a family password that only authorised persons can use to pick them from school. This password should not be disclosed to outsiders. This means that your children will not follow a stranger who shows up to pick them from school if such a person cannot prove he’s familiar with the family code.
3) Teach them to scream and flail their arms when strangers attempt to get too close. Sometimes, a stranger might successfully get the kids or be in close proximity. However, if they know to scream and make a scene, other adults in the vicinity would know something is not right and move to save them.
4) Teach them not to give out personal details on social media or plan to meet a stranger from social media secretly. Educating them about predators and the tactics used will help them become cautious on social media.
5) Teach them phone numbers of parents and emergency numbers so they can reach out in emergencies. It is also important that they know what to say when they call these numbers in an emergency: their name, location and type of emergency. This will help adults know how to help them in any given situation.
6) Make your home friendly and encourage your kids not to keep secrets. Know who their friends are, know who they are chatting with, ask them to invite their friends for family events so you can get to know them. This makes it easy to trace unusual occurrences.
7) It is also important to control their internet usage and monitor sites visited regularly.

Keep keeping safe.