Preventing Heatstroke In the Car

This post was sponsored by Auto Alliance as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.

We all want to believe that we are the best parents in the entire world.  I mean it’s our job to think that we are getting everything right.  Our job is to constantly put smiles on our kids’ faces, even though we may be going through an extremely difficult situation ourselves in the moment.  From the moment that we find out we are pregnant, we are going through all the likely and different scenarios in our head. How do we bath them? How do I install a car seat? What times do I feed them, how much, how often? Can I drown them by giving them a bath?  Literally, during the months leading up to their birth, you play 431,134,943 different scenarios in our head.  Then, their born and you have another 536 million situations you think of every day.

One thing remains the same.  We are constantly just trying to keep our children alive the best way we know how.

One thing that was so important to me was ensuring car seat safety. I wanted to know exactly how the car seat was supposed to be secured.  I needed to know how to properly secure buckles and pads. Most importantly, I wanted to know how to safely buckle my girls in without doing an damage to then, whether we were going to a short ride or a large one. And when we first had our oldest daughter I didn’t get car seat safety right immediately.

One of the other things that has always frightened me this time of year, is that I, or somewhere near to me is going to lock their baby in a car. Especially as my children get older and our routines are changing, I know how things can happen in the blink of an eye. Every year an average of 37 children of lost when left unattended in an automobile. Many of those cases are simply mistakes. Of these cases, 50% of them are children under a year. I know for me, I could barely function for the first year, so I get how difficult this process could potentially be.

Fast fact: At 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the inside of a parked car with the windows open, can reach 120 degrees within 15 minutes.  Let that sink in for a second. Not 80 or 90 (or even 112 degrees like it was here today). SEVENTY. Can reach 50 degrees higher in under 15 minutes. One of the reasons it’s so lethal to children is that the child’s body heats 3-5x faster than adult.  So heatstroke for a child left unattended, happens much faster.

The good news is that heatstroke is completely avoidable.

Auto Alliance has launched campaign in support of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) “Look Before You Lock: Never Leave A Child Alone in a Car” campaign with three easy tips.

• A-Avoid: Avoid heatstroke-related injury and death by never leaving your child alone in a car, not even for a minute. Also, your car should always remain locked when you are not in it, so kids don’t get into their own.
• C-Create Reminders: Create reminders by putting something in the back of your car next to your child such as a briefcase, a purse or a cell phone that is needed at your final destination. This is especially important if you’re not following your normal routine.
• T-Take Action: If you see a child alone in a car, call 911. Emergency personnel want you to call. They are trained to respond to these situations. One call could save a life.

In addition to the tips from Auto Alliance, the things that we do to ensure less likelihood of stroke is to:

1. Immediately open car doors behind us in our vehicle – whether our children are with us or not, but open the doors, we are focused to peak inside to double check
2. Teach our children how to safely and properly buckle and unbuckle themselves and their doors – this is much harder for young children; but our newly 3 year old can get herself in and out of her buckles most of the time and open the car door.  This ensure they can at least get out of the car on their own. We also make sure that anytime they are buckling themselves INTO the car, we double check accuracy before driving away
3. We verbalize with each other who has what child(ren). For example, if I’m going to Target and I don’t have any of the girls, I verbally tell Andrew that he has both girls. He knows to watch them then. Likewise, if we split up in a store and we both have a child, I ensure that he knows which child he has and which I have. This way, we are always in control and know where are children are and who has the responsibility

These are just some of the ways that we are working to ensure that we are never faced with a heatstroke situation with our children. What do you do?  Leave a comment below, letting me know!

For more information about heatstroke prevention, and to help spread awareness, visit https://autoalliance.org/safety/heatstroke

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