Discover how the Popping the Bubble Wrap podcast, powered by Parachute, Canada’s national charity dedicated to injury prevention, offers invaluable insights and advice on keeping your kids safe in the modern world.
Have you ever caught your child mixing up a potion with glass cleaner ’cause the blue colour is so pretty?
Or how about the day when you realized, too late, that overnight, your toddler now knows how to pull the island stool over to the cabinet where you store your medications, and can climb up with ease?
Parenting presents you with challenges that you never imagined to keep your kids safe – and these are just two of the stories we heard on the first episode in 2024 for our podcast, Popping the Bubble Wrap.
Parachute, as Canada’s national charity dedicated to injury prevention, has plenty of answers on how to keep your kids safe without bubble wrapping them and overprotecting them. Our website at parachute.ca is filled with information on everything from preventing burns and scalds to winter outdoor safety.
But more than providing information, we want to interact directly with parents and share their questions and concerns with other parents. That’s why we started the Popping the Bubble Wrap podcast in late 2022, to bring together parents from across Canada along with experts in everything from drowning prevention to outdoor play. You can listen to our conversations, commiserate, laugh and learn along the way.
The advice you hear on our podcast is solid, based on scientific evidence about what causes injury, what doesn’t, and the best preventative measures to take. Too often, we panic and turn to Mr. Google for advice. Some of it might be good – heck, you might even find a link to parachute.ca! – but the internet is a wild mix of opinions, facts, and opinions posing as facts. When it comes to the safety of your child, you want to make your decisions based on the best advice.
Our first season, available on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else where you find podcasts, covered a wide range of topics, from preventing falls that cause serious injuries to how we can make our roads safer for children. With support from Amazon Canada, in season two we’re focusing products: both those that can keep your child safe, such as car seats, and those that can cause surprising harm, such as button batteries.
Our first episode is released March 19 and one mom shared the glass cleaner potion incident: She kept cleaning supplies in a cupboard protected by a child safety cabinet lock but, this day, it suddenly became suspiciously quiet. Her young genius had figured out how to open the lock and was set to make a potion from cleaning chemicals that can be dangerous if swallowed and, in some cases, can cause damaging fumes if mixed.
Our expert, Parachute’s Director of Knowledge Translation Stephanie Cowle, acknowledged that many safety measures are not meant to be child proof, but rather child resistant: that we can add “layers of protection” between our child and harm. We can put items both in an inaccessible spot, as well as protected by locks. “This buys time so when things get too quiet, you have time to intervene.”
Another parent guest asked, what should I do if I think my child has gotten into something poisonous? She did not know – and maybe you don’t know, either – that there’s a toll-free phone number in Canada that connects you to the poison centre nearest you. That number is 1-844-POISON X, or 1-844-764-7669. Program it into your phone today.
Cowle explained that poison centres are staffed by nurses and pharmacists with additional training in poison information. If your child is showing any symptoms of distress, of course, call 9-1-1 or head to the nearest emergency department. But if there are no symptoms, a poison centre expert can assess the details of the incident and provide you with medical advice – and peace of mind. “About 60 per cent of current poison centre calls are managed at home, saving a trip to the emergency department.”
That’s great information, and you’ll find plenty more on Popping the Bubble Wrap, which will release new episodes throughout 2024 on the third Tuesday of each month. It’s like a kitchen chat with great friends, with the bonus that you can trust everything you hear.
