I have lived in Arizona for around 5 years now and one of the biggest challenges that I have faced since being down here is the immense heat takes grip of this state during the summer months. I was actually chatting with my friend recently, Michael Eckhardt Tucson resident like myself, about the dangers that are caused by the heat when it comes to young kids. Worryingly there has been a bit of a rise of late of kids being taken to hospital because of problems with the heat and I refuse to be accused of being a father who did not do enough to prevent a death or health problem happening to my kids, as a result of this scorching Tucson heat.
For this reason, keeping the kids cool is my primary objective and I have also began teaching them about the dangers of the sunshine here in Arizona. I like the fact that the kids know a little bit themselves to keep safe and if you want to teach your kids the danger of the sun, here are some tips.
Visual Aids
I knew that if I simply told my kids about the very real dangers which heat and sunshine pose, they would probably not take it on board so I decided to give them a visual demonstration. A few weeks ago the temperature gauge hit 100 and I took the kids out to the sidewalk and cracked an egg on the ground, the egg cooked in no time at all and amazed the kids. After this I went back into the house and light up the stove to show the kids just how hot a frying pan needs to be in order to cook an egg, they placed their hands above the pan, and I could see my message sink in.
Shocking
I don’t like to expose my kids to very much shocking footage of anything but I felt that if I was going to teach them right, I would need to do just that. I loaded a few photos up on my laptop of severe sunburn and showed the kids what could happen if they didn’t stay protected. At first the kids thought this was a joke but the more pictures that they saw, the more it sunk in with them.
Exercises
In order to check that my message had landed, I asked my kids to do a few exercises for me and one of them was to write down a daily plan to manage the sunshine and heat. All three of my kids were amazing at this and brought me a daily plan for how much time they would spend in the sun, how much suncream they would need and how much water they would take on board. The figures were a little skewed but I could clearly see that the message had landed about just how dangerous the heat is.
There is nothing wrong with teaching your kids about dangers like these and doing so can really help them to stay safe when the sun is burning down.