Teaching kids safety is one of the most difficult things for most parents to do because it is so difficult to relate how horrible the consequences can be. Unfortunately it is a must as the children get older and start to take on swing sets or other potentially dangerous playground equipment. Instead of turning a blind eye to the issue, it is important to always review safety materials and teach your kids exactly how to behave in most situations.
Image by Uncle Saiful
It is always important to make sure the kids are told upfront the ways to be safe in any situation that can be dangerous. Telling them some of what could potentially happen is a good way for them to know how serious these things are, but you should be careful to leave out some upsetting or otherwise disturbing pieces of information. It is also important to expose the children to as many interests as possible to see what they enjoy the most or have a knack for. Doing this helps a lot because children often enter situations where they do not have any ground to know how to act or think, where them having some information to work off of would be beneficial. Given temptation kids have for many things, it is good to use this as a means to keep communication open throughout one’s life.
Some Unique Dangers To Avoid
Swing sets, see saws and other pieces of playground equipment provide unique dangers that children often ignore until they have an accident. Taking children to playgrounds with common commercial swing set equipment and swing set equipment for schools early on is a good way to let them practice while explaining what not to do and why. Even though most kids do it anyway, teaching them not to jump off is important since it can be very dangerous. These lessons can also serve as a way to figure out things to do with the kids to keep them and yourself entertained.
Equipment the children climb on, like monkey bars and jungle gyms, also must be handled with care since the children can be too excited to be safe when trying them out at first. Climbing on them is good, and starting with the smaller ones helps out a lot. Even just climbing up on various everyday furniture and everything else can help a child prepare for staying safe while giving them something fun to do. Unfortunately, this is not what we want to do with some kids since they will be doing this regularly anyway every single day of their childhood.
Eric Blair writes about playground equipment and outdoor sports furniture from ParknPool.