Even though the kids are back to school, your house may still be chockfull of those toys the children got for Christmas. And although you may have been around to ensure proper usage in the couple of weeks following the holiday, that attention may flag in the ensuing weeks and months.
One area where you have to be particularly aware of the danger is in battery safety. Parents that are otherwise quite attentive to only purchasing toys that are designated for a given age range may nevertheless overlook those batteries that might be inside the toys. To make sure that you’re prepared to deal with this threat, please consider the tips available from Safe Kids in a new report.
You first want to be able to understand the danger so that you can react if your child appears ill. That reaction must be immediate so that your child is protected. As the report notes, small button batteries can react negatively with a person’s saliva, forming an electrical current that leaves the esophagus burnt. Once the battery is swallowed, it can continue to wreak havoc on your child’s internal organs, and because the symptoms may be similar to the flu or nonexistent, you need to be vigilant to your children’s toy habits at all time.
If you determine that there’s a possibility your child has swallowed such a battery, you need to head to the emergency room at once, as a healthcare official will know the best course of action, whether that’s the induction of vomiting or surgery. If the damage is severe enough, your child may actually have multiple surgeries ahead.
Because of this, the best thing to do is of course to make sure that a battery never gets swallowed in the first place. Make sure that any product containing such a small battery is far from where children can reach it, and keep in mind the oft-overlooked items that reside within the home. It’s not just toys; some greeting cards have batteries, as do otherwise benign-seeming things as flameless candles, calculators, decorations, key fobs, and more. All of these could prove dangerous if the child accesses the battery inside.
You may want to lock any batteries away that don’t need to be in use, but obviously you’re not going to want to put your television remote and other regularly used items under lock and key. That’s why supervision is important, and it’s also why you should consider using something as simple as duct tape to keep the battery compartment otherwise secured. In this way, you are doing your kids a favor by protecting them from harm.