Mum Shares Personal Story To Warn Parents Against Going Down a Slide With Their Little Ones
A mother of three from New York, Heather Clare has issued a warning against riding down a slide with your little children. Sharing her personal experience, she highlighting its dangers.
Clare, 35, shared a photo of the moment her daughter’s leg broke at a playground in September 2015 while going down the slide with her.
Heather Clare posted the picture on Facebook saying it was her annual public service announcement. The mother is pictured with her daughter, Meadow when she was 12 months old and was taken at the exact point that her daughter’s leg broke.
”So every year I do a PSA on going down a slide with your child on your lap. When Meadow was 12 months old (I went down with Matthew first, but he was lucky), I went down the slide with her on my lap and her foot got caught between me and the slide.
This picture is the moment her leg was breaking. She’s still smiling… because it was happening at this exact moment.”
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At the emergency room, the doctor who treated Meadow said she had a fractured tibia and fibula. The doc explained to Clare, whose daughter was in a cast for five weeks, that he sees this type of injury all the time.
”When we went to the ER, the super empathetic doctor lectured me on how common this injury is. I had no idea. I thought everyone took their kids down the slide. I strongly feel every playground should have a warning sign, but since I’ve never seen one (and we go to ALOT of playgrounds).
I share this picture every year in hopes that the pain Meadow felt and the guilt that I still feel will save other babies and parents from the same.
Don’t ever go down a slide with a baby on your lap. There is no SAFE way to go down a slide with your little. It is literally one of the top 3 reasons young children are seen in the ER during the Spring and Summer.
For everyone commenting on how I am holding my daughter. We didn’t start this way. She was centered on my lap.
When I realized what was happening, I used my top hand to try to stop us and leaned to release her foot. I wasn’t riding down the slide with her on one side and leaning. That’s “common sense”.”
”I always see parents riding down the slide with their children at the playground. I would like to see specific slide safety sign saying not to go down a slide with child in any way. It’s the weight of a person behind them that makes it dangerous and makes it hard for them to stop,” she told MailOnline:
“He advised there is no safe way to go down a slide with a child on your lap,” Clare tells Us Weekly. “He said that the weight of a person, even a sibling, behind the child doesn’t allow them to stop if a limb gets caught.”
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MD, Clinical Professor and Pediatric Emergency Medicine Staff Physician, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine,Charles Jennissen explains that;
“Many parents and caregivers go down a slide with a young child on their lap without giving it a second thought. And in most cases I have seen, the parents had no idea that doing so could possibly give their child such a significant injury.
People say they hold their child’s limbs in or tuck their legs in between theirs. The child’s legs can get stuck no matter what.
Also, the weight of another person behind the child, even an older sibling who doesn’t weigh much, pushes the smaller child down the slide and doesn’t allow them to stop if they get stuck,” Clare says.
”Really, the safest way is for a child to go down alone. If they are too young to go down alone, they shouldn’t go down yet. I didn’t know this but after it happened to my daughter, I did a lot of research on it.”
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