Safety for Older Kids

Dr. Roger McIntire

For example, when the kids learn to drive, they need to practice good habits when using the car – not just driving habits but also parking habits.

Pat Malone, an FBI agent, police instructor and bodyguard for famous figures, makes these suggestions:

1. Be aware of your surroundings when returning to your car at the mall or parking garage. Look at the inside back seat and passenger side before entering your car and enter on the side away from occupied cars nearby. If a suspicious person is waiting in a nearby car, return to the mall or store and ask a guard or policeman to walk you out.
2. Once in the car, some teenagers have a tendency to just sit while checking a list or putting away receipts. Malone advises, "As soon as you get into your car, lock the doors and leave."
3. Teens can be too sympathetic. Malone described his daughter’s experience when she noticed two older women ahead of her as she left a mall. She also noticed a police car driving by them. As she approached her car a man in the back of a nearby car asked for her help. He said he was handicapped and wanted her to close his passenger side door. She wondered why the man’s car wasn’t using a handicapped space and why he didn’t ask the older women or the police for help. She turned back toward the mall, and the man began cursing her. At the mall doors, she looked back to see the man get into the front seat and speed away.

Other safety issues are just as important. After auto accidents, drowning is the second leading cause of accidental death for children under 5. After 10, suicide is the third leading cause of death and 80 percent of those succeeding are males.

Our sons are much more likely to hurt themselves. Three-quarters of school homicides and suicides are males. Boys are twice as likely to sustain accidental brain injury or spinal cord injury. Over 80 percent of drownings are among males (of all ages), and the pedestrian death rate is twice as high for males. Nearly 140,000 children are treated for traumatic brain injury sustained while bicycling. Most of these accident victims are boys.

What’s a parent to do? Insist on everyone using their seat belts on every trip and wearing bicycle helmets for every ride. Put little ones in appropriate restraining seats. Only 6 percent of children 4 to 8 ride in booster seats, the recommended safety seat for this age group.

Talk with your kids about the dangers they face and the habits that will keep them safe. It’s a family routine that can keep you up to date on their emotions as well. Listen for signs of depression, especially in the boys because they are less likely to admit they could use some help.

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