First Aid and Fire Safety: Teaching Them The Basics

Nobody wants to think of their child alone in an emergency situation, but accidents can happen anywhere and one day they might have to be the ones to help. Below are a few ideas I have taken from the Red Cross website, as well as some fire safety tips from around the internet, that you should consider teaching your child to prepare them for an emergency situation.

Calling 999: How to call 999 is something you should teach a child from a very early age, as at some point the emergency services may need to be called and they could be the only one there capable of doing it. Obviously you need to make it very clear that calling 999 isn’t a game and that they should only do it in an emergency i.e. when they are alone with an adult who will not wake up.

Recovery position: This is a very useful skill to teach a child, as if they are alone then it allows them to leave the injured person safely whilst they go to find help. Even just knowing to turn an unconscious person on their side could be enough to save their life.

Bleeding control: Knowing how to handle a bleeding wound is a very important skill even for a child, as if they are the first ones on the scene and it is a severe cut then they need to know how to stop the bleeding effectively.

CPR: In general CPR is probably too complicated to teach a young child, but even some knowledge of it from an early age could help them to save someone’s life one day.

Fire plan: Just like at work or school, it is vital to have a fire plan at home that everyone in your house knows. This is could be as simple as telling your children that if they really believe there is a fire then they should leave the house and meet you on the street, rather than waiting for you to come and get them. It’s important to tell your children about crawling along the floor if there is smoke in the room and checking the heat coming from the door before opening it.

Drop and roll: Understanding the proper protocol for dealing with clothing on fire can quite easily mean the difference between life and death for the victim, as often in these situations people panic and forget what to do. A child shouting ‘drop and roll!’ could help the victim to act correctly and extinguish the fire.

By teaching your child these simple ideas you could be preparing them to save someone’s life in an emergency situation, potentially even yours. The British Red Cross has very kindly provided us with an illustrated resource that explains all of these first aid skills, and many more, which you can download here, as well as three first aid lesson plans with us that can be used at home or at school, which you can access here.