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Dr. Jesse Vrecenak (Guest): Hi, my name is Jesse Vrecenak. I’m a pediatric surgeon at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and a mom doc.

Melanie Cole (Host): Welcome, this is Mom Docs, the pod cast from St. Louis Children’s Hospital. I’m Melanie Cole, and today we’re talking about summer safety. So Dr. Vrecenak I’m so glad to have you here with us. Let’s star with bicycles. Scooters – it’s that time of the year, kids are starting to take them to school, and they ask why do I have to wear a helmet? I see some adults going by without the helmets, they hear that we didn’t wear helmets when we were little guys. Tell us about helmets.

Dr. Vrecenak: So helmets are incredibly important. Unfortunately it’s one of the common things that populates the emergency room this time of year. As kids start riding all the bicycles and scooters and toys they got over the winter and have been waiting to ride. Unfortunately it’s inevitable and sometimes there’s going to be some accidents and helmets are critical in keeping them safe in a crash. So bicycle helmets are in most areas required for children. Though unfortunately a majority of children are not going to wear a helmet every time they get on a bicycle, and it just takes one time to have a fall and a serious head injury. So helmets are basically a method of preventing or lessening the severity of brain injury during a bicycle crash. The helmet is composed of some sort of crushable material, usually some sort of Styrofoam or similar material covered with a thin layer of plastic. That crushable material absorbs some of the energy of the crash and actually kind of spreads it out over a larger area so it does a little bit less damage than it would have, or it’s impact would have without helmets. Ideally we want the helmet to take the force of the blow and not the skull. So a properly fit bicycle helmet can significantly decrease the likelihood of sustaining severe brain injury or even head or face injuries during the bicycle crash.

Host: Such important information Dr. Vrecenak, and as someone who recently started wearing a helmet myself but always insisted that my children do – I get it now and again it’s so important. So let’s move on because grilling is something we all look forward to in the summer. We just love it. What’s a safe distance from the grill for kids that want to look and see stuff cooking or learn how to use the grill? You’re a pediatric surgeon and there’s injuries that can happen around the grill isn’t there?

Dr. Vrecenak: Absolutely so particularly a grill with an open flame or where you’re using lighter fluid, those are high danger activities for young kids who may not understand potential for burns or other injuries. So as a rule, it’s safest to keep kids at least three feet away from the grill. It’s close enough that they can look and see what’s going on, but if something – if flames flared or pouring lighter fluid on there, you had a flame come back at you, that’s going to keep the child out of harm’s way. The other thing, even a grill that’s not actually on or working may still be hot, so it’s really important to remember that even when you’re finished cooking and eating dinner that you still need to keep kids away from that area because contact with a hot grill even for a very short period of time can be enough to cause pretty severe burns.

Host: What about temperature of food? Do we have to concern ourselves? We don’t want to make everybody at our grill party sick.

Dr. Vrecenak: Absolutely, so that varies based upon what you’re cooking, but getting a proper meat thermometer is a good investment in many cases, just a couple dollars at the grocery store. For hamburgers or other types of ground meats, you want to make sure that those are at least 160 degrees at the center, and for chicken, 165. If you’re cooking fish it’s a little bit less, 145 but you want to make sure you’re hitting those temperatures because below that, the food hasn’t gotten hot enough to kill the microbes or bacterial growth that could be inside, particularly in the summer you have to think about not only what the food has gotten to, but how you’re storing it before you cook it and how you’re presenting it afterwards. One of the other big culprits in terms of foodborne illness is improper storage. So if you’re out picnicking all day and you have meats that’s not kept appropriately cold while you’re waiting for it to cook, that could be a problem, and similarly if you cook everything up and it sits out for a couple of hours, that could be problematic as well. So really make sure that you’re maintaining good food safety practices all the way through.

Host: Now another thing that goes along with all of that fun summer time grilling and bicycling is mowing the lawn, something that not everybody loves to do, but as someone who works with the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Vrecenak, I’ve heard that lawn mower injuries can be pretty high in the summer. What about kids and lawn mowers? We want our 11-year-olds to mow the lawn, we do but is that not safe?

Dr. Vrecenak: Sure, so that’s actually a really good point. Unfortunately, as a trauma surgeon, at least a couple times a year we do see children come in with significant injuries from a lawnmower and those can be permanent and disfiguring so it’s very, very important to really think about safety as you’re mowing the lawn or using any kind of outdoor power equipment to be honest. So the AAP recommends that children under the age of 12 really shouldn’t be around lawn mowers at all. At 12, depending on the size and strength of the child, the recommendation that a push mower may be appropriate, and this is something where as a parent obviously you have to use your judgement. Not every 12-year-old is built the same. Some 12-year-olds may be well able to handle that lawn mower, while others it might still be a bit much. You want to make sure that that child’s not going to have any trouble controlling it, particularly if you’re using a self propelled or powered variety because you really don’t want that to get away from them, and in terms of riding lawn mowers or tractors, the AAP recommends a minimum age of 16 before kids are able to use that machinery and one of the things that is really, really common and unfortunately a surprisingly common way that younger kids actually get injured is taking a ride on someone’s lap on one of those riding lawn mowers. As most parents know, kids don’t always stay exactly where you put them or ask them to and a little bit of wiggling can get a child right off that lawn mower and unfortunately make contact with the blade. So you want to make sure that, although it’s fun, really kids are not using lawn mowers as toys because they’re serious pieces of machinery and the injuries could be quite severe.

Host: Yikes, I just hate to even think of that. Gives me the wiggles. So let’s move on to something else that parents concern themselves with. Dr. Vrecenak, at a friend’s house, and I’ve had this experience with my son. What questions should we ask before letting our child play at someone else’s house? Should we ask that question about guns?

Dr. Vrecenak: Yeah, so as a mom of 3, I know exactly how hard and awkward that can feel.

Host: So awkward.

Dr. Vrecenak: Really awkward, but it’s one of those things, that just like anything where when it comes to your children’s safety, you can’t worry about who you might be offending or anything like that. Guns are a huge, huge source of danger to young children, and although obviously many households have guns, it’s critical to understand, a) If there are guns in the house where your child is going to play, and if so, how those guns are stored. The key is making sure that if there are any firearms in the house, that they are kept unloaded and appropriately locked up in a way that children do not have any access. So the AAP has a big campaign going on right now to encourage folks to ask those questions. In fact, there is a date coming up on June 21^st dedicated to this movement to promote this kind of questioning and normalize it, so that maybe it won’t feel so awkward to say something like that to their parents. It’s important if you’re going to say that, that it’s not said in a judgmental way, guns that are kept unloaded and appropriately locked up away from kids do not pose the kind of danger that should prevent a child from going to play at someone’s house. That’s an important thing to understand. You may be saving your child’s life or someone else’s. So it is really important to have that open conversation, and if it turns out that you get an answer you don’t like, that doesn’t mean that your children can’t be friends or they can’t play together. In that situation, the best thing to do is say you know what, how about you come over to play at our house today? You can make sure that you facilitate your children playing with their friends but in a safe environment where everybody feels comfortable.

Host: That is some of the most important information that we discuss on these shows because you have to feel comfortable where your children are playing, and you also have to educate your children about what is acceptable and what is not if their friends pull out a knife or a gun and say look at what I’m going to show you. Kids have to know to tell you about that stuff. Wrap it up for us doctor, what would you like parents to know about all of the scaries that are out there that can get at our kids and the best ways that we can have so much fun in the summer and keep them safe at the same time.

Dr. Vrecenak: So the biggest and most important message about all of this is for the parents to be involved. Know what’s going on with your kids. Summertime is a time when kids have a lot more freedom, have the structure of school. They need – often playing with friends or in different environments than they’re used to. Know where they’re going, who they’re going to be with, and what they might come into contact with there. Whether it’s pool, fireworks, barbeque grill, guns, all of these things are potential dangers but hazards that can be managed with appropriate information. Make sure you talk to your kids about what dangers they might encounter and help them think through strategies on how they would handle the situation. Also, for things like bicycle safety, do it yourself. I can’t emphasize how important it is for parents to live by the same rules that they expect from their children. Those kids’ parents who are religious about wearing a helmet are vastly more likely to wear the helmet when they’re not in the presence of their parents and to continue doing so as they get older themselves.

Host: Being a great role model is so important. Thank you for making that point and for joining us today, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of Mom Docs with St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Head on over to our website at stlouischildrens.org for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you’ve found this podcast informative, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other interesting podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.