Experience on safety and first aid training for preschool children

The safety work of preschool children always prioritizes prevention over first aid, and qualified caregivers must accurately grasp the "measure of prevention" and "standard of rescue" at the same time - they can neither tie up the children's exploration hands and feet due to excessive anxiety, nor miss the golden intervention time due to paralysis.

I have been a middle class teacher for three years, and I have participated in many similar trainings before. I thought this time was just a formality, but I didn't expect that the practical part on the first day caught me off guard. At that time, a dummy with the same weight as a 3-year-old child was used to practice the Heimlich maneuver for children. I followed the tutorial I had read online and pressed it. The training teacher next to me directly held my hand down and said, "If you exert such force on a real child, your ribs may be broken. ”Only then did I realize that those seemingly simple operations had very detailed requirements: the difference in compression strength between a 20-pound small class doll and a 40-pound big class doll was almost doubled. Even a centimeter difference in stance and fist position (two horizontal fingers above the navel, never touching the sternum) could cause problems. Later, the teacher used a case from the kindergarten next door last year as negative teaching material: There was a child in the small class who secretly hid a longan in his mouth while playing on the slide. He fell and got stuck in his airway. The teacher on duty panicked and slapped the foreign object on the back, which in turn made the foreign object deeper. In the end, the doctor and his parents who came to deliver the things were able to save the child with a Heimlich. We had complained about the teacher's poor psychological quality before, but this time we realized that subconsciously patting the back and reaching out to pick up foreign objects are the instinctive reactions of most people. They are exactly the high-risk operations of foreign objects getting stuck in the throat. Without repeated practical training, 90% of people will do it wrong.

But what touched me most in this training was not the first aid skills, but the discussion on safety protection standards. Nowadays, many kindergartens engage in "zero-risk" outdoor activities in order to avoid responsibility: you can only queue up and walk up the slide slowly, but are not allowed to run. Pebbles in the sand pit must be picked up one by one. You are not allowed to hold branches or climb on shelves higher than 1 meter. This was also implemented in our kindergarten before, because we were afraid that if we fell or bumped, parents would come to our door. The child safety education experts invited this time specifically mentioned the concept of "risky games" that is currently highly debated in the academic circle. He said that many kindergartens in Northern Europe will deliberately leave small slopes, low branches, and uneven grass so that children can judge whether they can climb and fall. In the long run, this can actually reduce the rate of safety accidents. After all, you cannot stay with your child forever, and he must learn to evaluate risks by himself. On the spot, an old teacher who had been teaching for 20 years retorted: "A three- or four-year-old child can't even tell the difference between hot and cold. Who do you ask the parents to talk to for reasoning if he really falls and breaks a bone? ”The training teacher did not draw an absolute conclusion. He only said that everyone can try to find a balance. For example, leaving 10 minutes of free exploration time every day. The teacher will pay close attention and slowly explore the boundaries. This kind of non-one-size-fits-all attitude is much more useful than forcing me to have a bunch of standards.

Talking about misunderstandings about first aid, this training also directly overturned my years of inherent experience. Previously, a child in our class touched the edge of the thermos bucket and the back of his hand became a small red patch. I specially found a scald ointment to apply to him at that time. Only this time I learned that for first-degree burns that are only red and swollen without blistering, the first thing to do is to run cold water for 15-20 minutes. Do not apply scald ointment, toothpaste, soy sauce and other things casually, which can easily affect the doctor's judgment and risk infection. I later mentioned this to the life teacher in the kindergarten. She also said that she had been applying toothpaste for 20 years and had never had any problems. In fact, this is the difference between the empirical school and the evidence-based school. No one is absolutely right or wrong, but we young teachers must first follow the latest standards. If something happens, we can give a clear explanation to the parents.

The anti-lost education part is also quite subversive. In the past, we taught children "don't talk to strangers and don't take strangers' things." However, the district police who came to teach this time said that this concept has long been outdated: last year, a child was separated from his parents in a shopping mall. He squatted in a corner and cried. Passers-by asked and did not dare to say anything. It took more than half an hour to find his family. What is more recommended now is to teach children to identify "strangers who can ask for help": police officers in police uniforms, cashiers in shopping malls and supermarkets, students in school uniforms, and school security guards. If you are really lost, take the initiative to find these people and report their parents' mobile phone numbers. It is much more practical than the one-size-fits-all "don't talk to strangers".

Now I always have a palm-sized small card stuffed in the pocket of my overalls at work. On the front are several core operating points for foreign objects stuck in the throat, burns and scalding, and to stop bleeding due to bumps. On the back are the taboos and emergency response methods of several allergic children in our class. It’s not that I can’t remember it, but it’s because people’s minds tend to go blank when they are really in trouble. Having such a small card is an extra layer of insurance. To be honest, after working in our industry for a long time, what I fear most is never being tired. It is that if something happens, I will be sorry for the trust that parents put their children in your hands. This training did not teach me to be a first aid expert. It just made me feel more confident: it is enough to know what situations should be handled according to the regulations and what risks can be appropriately allowed for children to experience.