Staying Safe on Vacation
How to keep your kids out of harm while traveling
As a parent, you want your family vacation to be a fun, relaxing getaway. What you don’t want? For your kids to get hurt or sick during your trip. That’s why it’s important to remember that even if you’re taking a break from the office, you’re still 100% on duty as a parent.
“On vacation, people let their guards down,” says Sally Kreuscher, Safe Kids coordinator at Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida. “We take safety precautions in our homes. But when we take a child into someone else’s home or a hotel, we still have to think about those safety measures and be extra vigilant.”
That includes ensuring that babies have a safe place to sleep, like a crib or pack-and-play. Infants should never share the same sleeping surface as their parents. “Co-sleeping in any way is not endorsed,” says Dr. Alexander Ortega, a pediatrician at Golisano. “And there’s no ‘except if you’re on vacation’ type of clause to it.”
If you’re staying someplace where there’s access to a pool or beach, you need to be extra cautious about keeping your kids out of the water without adult supervision, especially if there aren’t the same kinds of locks and barriers you have around your own pool. “Children often just want to be in the water, and it only takes a split second of losing your attention [for a drowning to happen],” says Dr. Ortega. “You have to completely accept the fact that the possibility is real and leave zero opportunities for a child to be unattended.”
Medication safety is also something that can fall by the wayside when traveling. “When we travel we tend to put our medications on the bathroom counter,” says Kreuscher. “But you want to still make sure that you’re keeping them up and out of reach of the kids. And when kids are visiting their grandparents’ homes, they can get into the grandparents’ medications if they leave them out. Kids are curious.”
Make sure your kids are using car seats that meet all safety standards; it’s often a good idea to bring your own if you’re renting a car on your trip. And if you’re traveling by plane, a package of Clorox wipes could be a vacation saver.
“You can’t change the fact that the air on a plane is recirculated, but you can at least clean your immediate area,” says Dr. Ortega. “The tray tables and the backs of the seats are big-time reservoirs for microbes and pathogens. Being a little OCD as a parent will help protect you from ruining your vacation.”
If your child has an ongoing medical condition, travel with a copy of their medication list, their physicians’ contact information and other relevant medical information. “That becomes very useful and impacts the care they would receive at a facility that doesn’t know that child,” says Dr. Ortega.
By paying attention and taking some easy precautions, parents can help reduce unnecessary trips to the ER or urgent care center.”
“You need to be extra vigilant,” says Kreuscher. “You have to think about those layers of protection on vacation as well as at home.”