I attended a 3+hour training tonight for daycare. This isn't always an easy thing to do because once daycare is out the door the last thing that I want to do is go and sit through hours of someone standing in front of the class teaching about kids. At least until I'm settled in my seat and the class begins.
Tonight was all about SIDS, car seat safety and shaken baby syndrome. I have taken the SIDS training 3 times in the last year and 1/2 and it is pretty well embedded that things are being discovered about this. Nuks are a good thing, less blankets, no toys in the crib, and most importantly, sleeping babies on their backs. The only problem that seems to come up with this method is that more and more children are getting flat heads from being on their backs so much which then leads to discussion about 'tummy time' and the importance of this.
Next up on the list was Shaken Baby Syndrome. This was very disturbing for me to sit through. How someone could act in such a way to an infant is beyond my realm of thinking. The woman said it's like a 2000 lb. gorilla shaking an adult. Imagine that for a moment. I have seen video clips from various talk shows of babysitters, nanny's actually shaking babies and it just turns my stomach. Knowing that the brain of that poor baby is being rattled around like a superball in that skull. And for what, because an adult loses a sense of themselves for a moment because they cannot quiet a little helpless child?
Damage that can occur from this is of course, death, spinal injuries, dislocations of limbs, fractured ribs, blindness from the optic nerve damage, inability to walk. All very serious things as well as in most cases, irreversable. Disturbing to say the least.
Car seat safety. Now this is a new licensing requirement for daycare providers. I personally don't really like to transport my daycare children because the liability is just too high. I'm already personally responsible for these children in my house but to take them out and trust that other drivers would just know that they must drive with care because I have precious cargo is just plain stupid. So I don't do that.
The law here in MN is age 4 or 40 pounds, the golden age and weight that children can be graduated into an adult size seat belt. But most parents already know that this is really not a logical age/weight as you put a child of this size in an adult seatbelt and see that the shoulder strap chokes them. And what is the child's first reaction to this? Well, pull their arm through the shoulder strap and run it across their chest under their armpit.
There is so much information that I took away from this training that it's too much to list. Parents who have children should really take this training. I remember when we had our first daughter how I sat down and read that car seat manual from cover to cover two or three times trying to figure out how to make the safest car ride for our little bobbin. When the instructor asked who had read their car seat manuals in class tonight, out of about 60 people only about 5 of us raised our hands. Scarey! Sad? I was really surprised actually that so few people would think that simply hooking a child into a carseat that's strapped in with a seatbelt would just make their child safe.
With all four of my kids, I have paid very close attention to car seat safety, until they reached that golden age. Of course with my older two, car seat, seat belt studies and air bag tests weren't really as big of a deal as they are now. Cars now come equipped with hooks that help to stablize car seats, special locking seat belts, all sorts of things that weren't even a whisper. I see all these improvements and cannot believe that I lived to write this! What on earth did our parents do way back when????
I do encourage parent's to look further into this for the sake of their kids' lives. I went to this training with an annoyed spirit but came out with some great information.
No comments:
Post a Comment