With summer officially around the corner, children will be spending more time outdoors playing and having fun. It is important for parents to understand and implement some safety tips and precautions during outdoor activity to deal with relevant concerns such as excessive exposure to the sun, insect bites, bee stings, wasp sting, chiggers, tic bites, and poison ivy among others. Children must be encouraged to spend time outdoors in order to build social relationships as well as indulge in healthy exercise for the body. However, they need to be well protected from the dangers of the sun and by following simple sun safety measures; blistering sunburns and sun tans can be prevented in addition to reducing the risk of skin cancer in later life. Some important tips to be followed while playing outdoors include:
1) Restricting the amount of time spent in the sun and avoiding play between 11 AM to 4 PM when the sun and heat is at its maximum
2) Ensuring that the child is adequately clothed
3) Using sunscreen
Protected sunscreen helps prevent sunburn and skin damage. Since children have tender and thinner skin with under developed melanin, skin burn are likely to be much higher without the use of sunscreen. It is a good habit to use sunscreen consistently as it provides the child with extra sun protection.
Swimming pools and playgrounds provide hours of fun activities for children and hence parents must take care to ensure that there are no dangers associated with these places. It is always better to keep an eye on the child in any body of water including swimming pools and at the beach, especially if these areas have been left unattended. Watch out for potential dangers that include broken pieces of glass, sharp objects, on the ground. Ensure that the equipment on the playground is in a proper working condition to prevent accidents due to malfunctioning. Children must also be taught basic principles of playground safety that include no shoving or pushing while on top of sliding boards and other high areas. The outdoors also invites other troubles and nuisances such as insect bites from tics, bugs, midgets and gnats; stings from wasps, hornets and bees and more. The bites and stings can be extremely painful but are not usually serious unless the child develops an adverse reaction to them. As an immediate treatment, scrape of the sting with the help of a flat object and apply a cold compress on the affected skin to reduce the inflammation, swelling and itchiness. Keep reassuring the child at all times, while placing the compress on the sting. Doctors usually recommend corticosteroids topical applications, calamine lotions as well as an oral antihistamine to prevent further allergy reactions.
Children and pets are also susceptible to tick bites especially in a heavy foliaged area. Since ticks are the carriers of Lyme disease, parents must carefully check for the presence of ticks on children. Tweezers are useful in grasping the tick and pulling it out before medical treatment can be administered.
