Tips For Keeping Children Safe On The Playground

There aren’t many children who don’t love spending time in a playground! While it’d be lovely to be able to let them play unattended and without a worry in the world, unfortunately, accidents in playgrounds do happen. This is the case even when child-friendly equipment and safety measures have been installed. Therefore, this blog post provides some tips on keeping children on the playground.

As you read on, you’ll find out about some common playground hazards including broken apparatus, vandalism and dangerous litter. You’ll also read about how educating your child on which equipment is safe for them, why supervision is important and how appropriate clothing can help.

Common Playground Hazards

If you’re lucky, you’ll live in an area with a playground that has been installed recently or where the equipment has been recently replaced. However, this isn’t always the case and, even when it is, there are still various potential playground hazards to be aware of including:

• Check the play area. Before your child starts playing and running around the playground, inspect the area carefully. Make sure there are no broken glass pieces, used syringes, dog mess etc lying around. If the playground is littered with used syringes and glass shards, even if they are only in a corner, consider the area unsafe and do not let your child play there.
• Damaged playground equipment. Playground apparatus can be damaged by vandals or through natural wear and tear. Therefore, to help prevent your child from being injured by playground equipment, it’s worth making a quick check for signs of rusting, sharp edges or loose screws before allowing them to play.
• Risks of falling. Children often gravitate towards the more dangerous playground equipment like tall slides, fast roundabouts and climbing frames. Therefore, it’s worth supervising them on this type of equipment and ensuring they know, where possible, how to get on and off of the equipment safely.
• Surrounding hazards. While most parks are quite safe because they are fenced off from many dangers, it’s important to not let your child wander off as they could be in danger from hazards such as busy roads, ponds, streams and rivers or areas where adults or teenagers are playing sports.

Importantly, checking for hazards in a playground doesn’t need to take long or get in the way of your child having fun!

Importance Of Supervision Children

It’s always wise to supervise young children in a playground so that they can have fun as safely as possible. Therefore, it’s a good idea to try and limit any distractions as much as possible. For example, if you are on your own with your child, you may want to put your mobile away so that you aren’t answering texts or other messages.

Similarly, if you are in a group, you could try to ensure that you’re sat in a position where you can keep an eye on your child whilst still participating in conversations with your friends.

Another good strategy for playground safety is to let your child know about safe boundaries. For example, you might tell them about the equipment they can use on their own and any which they must tell you about before using so that you can help them.

Finally, while we hope it never happens, it’s a good idea about what to do in an emergency. Therefore, you should familiarise yourself with situations you can deal with yourself and others where you might need to call the emergency services for support.

As your child becomes more confident, they will naturally want to explore more and test their limits when in a playground. This is fine and can help with their development but, as a parent, you may want to keep a watching eye over them even if you’re not standing right by their side while they learn playground safety for themselves.

Choosing Safe Play Equipment

We’ve touched on this a little already but picking the right equipment to use in a playground can be a great way to keep your child as safe as possible. Some strategies you could adopt include:

• Using age-appropriate equipment. It’s quite natural for a young child to want to use a zip wire in a playground when they see teenagers having fun. However, to try and reign in their enthusiasm (for safety purposes!), it’s a good idea to pick something more age-appropriate and show them how much fun it is to use instead.
• Check for safety marks. Luckily, playground equipment in the UK usually complies with strict safety guidelines to help protect children from being injured. If you’re in any doubt about the safety of a piece of playground equipment, you can check to see if it has the appropriate safety marks. If it doesn’t, you could ask the parish council, school or relevant authority to confirm that the equipment is safe to use.
• Inspect playground equipment. Again, you can make visual checks yourself before allowing your child to use playground equipment to try and identify any potential hazards.

We are lucky that most playground equipment in the UK is quite safe to use. However, it won’t do any harm to check for yourself to help prevent your child from being injured.

Educating Children On Playground Safety

One of the best ways to try and protect your child in a playground is to educate them on how to make good, safe choices for themselves. Here are some tips you could share with your children to improve playground safety:

• Teach basic safety rules. For example, explain to your child why it’s not safe to run on when surfaces and how to use certain pieces of playground equipment safely.
• The importance of taking turns. As well as being socially beneficial, taking turns and not pushing in can prevent your child, and others, from being injured on a playground.
• Identify safe play areas. For example, show your child that it’s safe to play within the playground’s fenced-off area but avoid areas outside where teenagers and adults might be playing ball games.

The information in this section is in no way us telling you how to parent your child! It’s simply a few ideas that we think could help keep your child safe on a playground.

Proper Playground Attire

If children had their choice of what to wear when visiting a playground, we doubt they’d choose anything like appropriate clothing in the majority of cases! Here are some examples of why it’s a good idea to think about what your child is wearing before visiting a playground or park:

• In most cases, it’s safer for children to wear closed-toe shoes with good grip rather than sandals or similar to a) help prevent slips, trips and falls and b) offer some protection from stubbed toes.
• Loose-fitting clothing should be avoided to prevent it from catching on sharp objects or other hazards in the playground.
• Similarly, it is a good idea to avoid scarves, jewellery, clothing with drawstrings and anything else that could catch on playground equipment as they could result in strangulation, torn ears or other injuries.

Additionally, as a parent, you’ll know about the importance of wearing the correct clothing for the weather. So, while your child might be happy to wear shorts and a t-shirt while it’s freezing cold in the winter, dressing more appropriately (and safely) could help prevent them from catching a cold!

Understanding & Preventing Common Playground Injuries

While children can suffer serious injuries while using a playground, some of the most common injuries sustained include:

Therefore, have a small first-aid kit available so that you can clean any wounds and treat them yourself if possible. Of course, if you are worried about your child after an accident in a playground, it’s always a good idea to seek a professional opinion by visiting your GP, calling NHS 111 or attending A&E.

As per the information above, appropriate clothing can help prevent cuts and grazes so long trousers may be more suitable than skirts or shorts in playgrounds with concrete surfaces rather than rubber safety tiles.

Once again, education can be as good as prevention when it comes to playground safety. Therefore, to help prevent some of the most common injuries, it’s a good idea to let your child exert themselves but try to help them understand their limitations.

In Conclusion

In this blog post, we have tried to provide some basic tips on keeping children safe on the playground.  We know that some accidents simply cannot be avoided and, after all, children will be children!

However, carrying out safety checks, ensuring your child is appropriately dressed, being prepared to deal with minor injuries and educating children on how to play safely can go some way to ensuring playgrounds are as safe as possible for everybody who uses them.