Health Corner...
Slide Safety: How to Protect Your Toddler From a Broken Leg
Parents all across the country are Instagramming and Snapchatting themselves riding down playground slides with precious little ones happily on their laps. What the social feed does not show are the thousands of small children every year who walk away from this age-old routine with tear-stained cheeks and a limp. As it turns out, though it seems innocent enough, riding down a playground slide with a small child on your lap is a common way to break a child’s leg.
It seems to make sense that by riding down the slide with a small child, we are protecting the child from injury. A held toddler can’t fall off the side of the slide or come down too hard at the end. And we want to show our kids that slides are fun and exciting, joining them in one of the great joys of childhood. The reality, however, is that going down a playground slide with a toddler on your lap puts your child at risk of a leg fracture.
The broken leg happens when your toddler hops in your lap, snuggles in and begins the descent. On the way down, she gets excited and unpredictably flails her limbs. This motion allows her foot to slip outside of your leg, getting trapped between your sliding body and the edge of the slide. Your adult weight pins her leg so quickly that before you even realize her foot is caught … twist and snap. This is especially true when toddlers are (appropriately) wearing sticky rubber-soled shoes that grip to the edge of the slide more firmly.
Researchers have found that up to 36 percent of slide-related injuries involve leg fractures, with the peak age of injury being 12 to 23 months. The vast majority of these doctor visits specifically include reports of the child sliding on a caregiver’s lap. This translates to thousands of broken legs every year. The treatment for these fractures is a long leg cast.
