Keeping your kids safe is usually your number one priority as a parent. You're vigilant when it comes to selecting a child care provider, to dosing their medication and to keeping up on all the current toy recalls. Paying attention to their safety at the playground should certainly not be an exception. Thousands of children are sent to emergency rooms every year from bumps and bruises and broken bones resulting from playground injuries that could've been prevented.

PROPER SUPERVISON
The first thing to do to keep kids safe on playgrounds is to ensure adequate supervision. If you aren't going to be there, is there appropriate adult supervision to handle the number of kids that are playing there at any given time? Make sure. Adult supervision can prevent most common playground injuries.

FALL PROTECTION
The National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS) says that 70% of playground injuries result from falls to hard surfaces. To make sure that your child doesn't become one of those injured kids, make sure that instead of concrete, grass, asphalt, rocks, blacktop, or packed dirt, play areas are surrounded by at least a six foot perimeter of a soft landing surface of pea gravel, sand, wood chips, mulch or synthetic rubber tiles. If the landing surface is wood chips, pea gravel or sand, it should be twelve inches deep.

SAFETY
Check for guard rails on equipment that is elevated and that equipment meets current safety standards set up by the NPPS. For example, hard plastic animal swings were recalled a number of years ago but can still be found in many parks around the country. Do a cursory check for protruding nails or screws that could be a serious hazard. S-hooks should be completely closed to prevent strangulation hazards. Make sure that all equipment appears to be anchored securely in the ground and no moorings appear to be visible.

SEPARATE PLAY AREAS
Littler kids (2-5 year-olds) and bigger kids (5-12 year-olds) are developmentally different and should be playing on different equipment. That means they should have separate play areas. Your playground should have separate areas to keep the big kids' play equipment safely separated from the little kids' play area. Little kids can be injured on equipment that is too big for them.

LITTLE THINGS
Simple precautions like making sure that your child is wearing shoes on the playground can prevent splinters on wood play equipment or burns on a hot metal slide. Keeping an eye on daily condition of the equipment can help too. For example, on a wet morning, a child may slip on a wet surface and you may want to bring a towel. And, teaching your child to keep an eye out not only for these things but on his surroundings may help him avoid a bump on the noggin from an errant swing or from a friend coming down the slide while he's passing by.

Every parent has to kiss a boo-boo now and then. It's part of the job. But, keeping your kids safe from major injury on the playground is possible if you pay attention to the playground and to your children while they are there.

References:
http://www.kidsource.com/kidso urce/content3/safe.playgrnd.t. p.k12.safe.html
http://www.playgroundsafety.or g/safety/checklist.htm

Learn more about this author, Rachel Mcclain.
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