Playground Safety Tips For Parents of Toddlers

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🚨Playground Safety Tip 🚨

Have you heard about helicopter moms? Are you one? I am, and I am not ashamed. With Addie only being 19 months old I’m just not quite ready to sit on a bench and let her play. We all know unexpected things can happen. She could run off, or worse. Thankfully, nothing even close to that has happened. After watching a movie about a family who went to a parade where the dad sat his daughter down for just a second to get money out to buy her a balloon, and she was gone, I knew I needed to do something, and while we know this won’t keep her completely safe, we decided to buy an Air Tag. We have it set to go off if she gets too far away from us. We can also manually set the alarm off, if we need to. We haven’t needed to use it, but having it gives us peace of mind.

We've all seen the stories, a parent is with their child in public. Something happens and they take their eyes off of them for one second and they are gone? This is literally one of my worst nightmares. What about you have you ever been worried about your child in a public space? If you answered yes, keep reading about some things I learned to keep my little one safe on the playground.

1.🚨Be aware of your surroundings who is there.

This seems so obvious to me, but whether it's your first time at the playground or your 300 time. Scan the playground. Look at who is there, take note of other people around, is there a strange by there self not with a child. Someone who may be a little too interested in your kid. Honestly in these situations I usually just go with my gut. There may obvious signs that someone doesn't have the best intentions but the hard truth is more often than not the real predators look like everyone else. Still be in the look out if your gut feels off, skip that park. Go to another park, go get ice cream, check out something else. Just don't risk it.

It also helps to be aware of your surroundings and pay attention to who is at the park. Living in a larger city, there are almost always strangers when we go to the park. It can be difficult to know who is there with a child, and who isn’t. Addie is always friendly towards strangers, and will often go up to them. Of course, I’m right there, so this hasn’t been a huge concern to me. I’ll never forget one time when we were at the park, Addie was walking around the equipment. She hadn’t quite figured out some of the bigger pieces and was mostly exploring. She came close to a man on a bench, and I expected her to be her normal friendly self. She wasn’t… she made a face, she backed away from him. Right away, I noticed this odd behavior from her. I didn’t draw attention to it though, I smiled at him as if nothing was wrong, because maybe it was nothing. But I made sure to keep her on the other side of the playground. I watched him for a little bit, just here and there. I never saw anything that indicated another child was with him. I also never actually witnessed any sign of any wrongdoing either. While the whole thing could be an odd mood she was in or something else. Part of me will probably always wonder if she sensed something in this man that told her to avoid him. Either way, if I ever see her exhibit that behavior again I will keep her away from the person. While this is related and unrelated to the park, I want to add in a whole aspect I will never force her to hug someone. Even if it’s family, even if it’s me. She needs to be able to say no, and know that no will be respected.

2.🚨 Check the condition of the playground itself and the equipment. Always check the equipment before letting your child play on it.

Again I had heard of this but never in a million years did I think it would something I would have to worry about. Until the day I did. I saw a report on a local facebook group that a park near our house had glass at it. They stated it had been cleaned up and they were looking into it. My mind kind of brushed it off as a one off, maybe some reckless kids, or maybe one person with ill intent. But a week or so later we went to another park, and I thought of that post so I went and checked. She was mad I made her wait to get on the playground. There was glass, all over an area she likes to play on. I was furious, scared, and grateful that I had seen that early post that led me to check. Now I check everytime, thankfully we haven't experience another issue with glass but I'll keep checking.

3. 🚨Consider getting an Air Tag and child’s bracelet.

I have seen some controversy over this one, so I'll just say do what feels right for you. I only use this when we are in a crowded area and I'm the only parent. I have never encountered a situation where it was necessary though, and I'm thankful for that beyond belief. I hope I never have to pull the app up and use it to searc for her. But the fact that I can search for her, the fact that I can make it play a noise, these are reasons I will continue to use it. I've seen moms attach it to the kids clothing, an even hid it in the shoes. For mine I use the bracelet and I tuck it out of sight where it can't easily be pulled off, but again I say do what feels right for you to keep your child safe on the playground.

When she gets older, we plan to set safety keywords so that she knows only someone safe will know her keywords. We plan to teach her how to defend herself in the event she encounters someone unfriendly. I wish we didn’t live in a world where this was necessary, but unfortunately the world is a scary place. I just want to make sure we are both prepared to prevent any accidents or unexpected events happening.

I know this post is a little on the scarier side of mom life, but anytime we go out in large crowds, parks or anywhere else these tips and procedures are on my mind.

Thanks for reading,

Let’s keep these babies safe!

Angie

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