InfoGuide4Parents.com

Tommy now had the coolest bike on the block. It was sleek, shiny black, and made for speed. The bike came with a new helmet, but how cool was that? Girls were not impressed by helmets.

He was a dashing figure until he hit the manhole cover and flew face first into the street, knocking out his two front teeth and causing a concussion that sent him to the hospital for two days.

Today his smile is a little crooked, but he keeps his safety helmet on perfectly straight.

Urging kids to “Run along and play” should not amount to sending them off to harm themselves. Sadly, that’s too often the result.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), more than 200,000 children are treated in hospital emergency rooms each year as a result of injuries related to playground equipment, and about 15 children die. Here are some suggestions to help your kids “Run along and play safely.”

Safety At Home

* Buy well-made equipment and assemble it correctly. Place it on a level surface and anchor it firmly.

Teens and automobiles are a dangerous combination. In fact, car crashes are the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 13 and 19.

About 4,000 teens die each year in passenger vehicle crashes, and hundreds of thousands are seriously injured.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the crash rate per mile driven for 16-19-year-olds is four times the rate for drivers over 19 years of age. Risk is highest at age 16.

For these reasons and more, you need to be sure your teen is adequately prepared to get behind the wheel of an automobile.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are more than two million unintentional human poisoning exposures a year in the United States, and approximately 20,000 deaths. About 10,000 deaths occur in the home, many of them due to drug overdoses.

These are frightening statistics and unnecessarily high. The first and best antidote is caution.

Good Advice And Bad Medicine

* Keep these telephone numbers by your phones: poison control center, doctor, and hospital.

* Always follow label directions. Poisoning can occur by eating, drinking or inhaling a substance, or getting it on the skin or in the eyes.

Jay was a whiz at research. He had a Ph.D. in chemistry, and he prided himself in the thoroughness of his technical reports. He had no tolerance for sloppy documentation.

All of which heightened his shock when he turned on the evening news and saw that his daughter’s day care center had been closed down for a long list of safety violations.

How could that be? Why hadn’t he seen those problems himself? He was the master of research. Or at least he would be the master of research the next time he checked out a day care center for little Sarah.