Children of all ages have been getting injured at the playground for years.
It really should come as no surprise that parents are always looking for the safest type of playground for their kids to play at, but those parents are always coming up short.
Playgrounds, just by their very nature, are just waiting for accidents to occur, no matter how safe they appear to be.
According to research of medical records, 10% of children’s injuries (ages 5-9) are related to playground equipment.
The same study showed that playgrounds accounted for 6% of injuries for kids aged 2-4 years old, and 2% for the older 10-14 year-old kids. Web Watch will make an assumption that the older children are being injured due to reckless behavior more so than standard playground-type activity. Just saying.
- Girls were more likely to be injured by see-saws than boys, by a 55%/45% margin. Every other type of playground stuff tended to injure boys more. Again, Web Watch will hypothesize that boys are more rambuctious than girls being the leading reason for this.
- Of the other playground toys, Swings and Slides accounted for the most injuries for 2-4 year olds, at 25.4% and 40.1% respectively. Older children tended to get hurt on the monkey bars more often.
- 9% of swing injuries happened after the child jumped off the swing.
What were the most frequent type of playground injuries? Fractures, at 43%. Other areas frequently injured were arms/hands and head injuires.
As it’s inevitable that children will get injured while playing on the playground, parents should be mindful of these SIX TYPES OF RISKY PLAYGROUND BEHAVIOR:
- Play with great heights
- Play with high speed
- Play with harmful tools
- Play near dangerous elements
- Rough‐and‐tumble play
- Play where the children can ‘disappear’/get lost, wandering out of sight of parents or others
So does this mean that parents should forbid their children from playground playtime? Absolutely not. Just cross your fingers and hope that you raised your kids properly to respect the danger that the playground could bring.