My heart goes out to the par­ents and fam­ily of a 2-year-old Amer­i­can boy, who trag­i­cally died last Wednes­day as the result of a scald­ing burn. His arm, neck and torso were scalded four days ear­lier, when the boy was reach­ing for a tum­bler of hot water that had been boiled to pre­pare tea. Doc­tors now research the results from micro­bi­ol­ogy and tox­i­col­ogy tests to con­clude how the scald could develop into a fatal.

Since I started my Mum­my­Mug adven­ture in 2007, I have come across study after study that repeat the same mes­sage: scalds from hot drinks are fre­quent and cause seri­ous injury in children.

But this is the first case of a hot water scald injury result­ing in death that I have ever seen reported. Should this unnec­es­sary acci­dent in spite of all pre­cau­tions you take hap­pen in your home: please — take the advice to see the doc­tor if the scald is larger than a post­stamp. Let’s make sure we never have rea­son to pub­lish a piece of news like this one again.

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In new research pub­lished at Malmo Uni­ver­sity, Swe­den, Anna Carls­son (PhD), con­firms the pic­ture that we see over and over again in acci­dent sta­tis­tics around the world: hot liq­uid is a major cul­prit of scalds in small children.

The study kept track of the num­ber of chil­dren being brought to health posts and hos­pi­tals in one city in Swe­den for treat­ment. 148 chil­dren came for burn injuries. 80% of those injuries were scalds, caused by hot liq­uid (71%) or hot food (29%). The great­est num­ber was boys between one and two years old.

Sec­ond, Anna analysed the causes of the scalds.  One key con­clu­sion is that an acci­den­tal scald is more likely to hap­pen when some­thing is unusual and out of the daily rou­tine:  dur­ing a sud­den visit by a friend or when a fam­ily mem­ber was tired, stressed or ill.

Another trig­ger was the mis­judge­ment of the child’s capa­bil­i­ties. Given the quick motoric devel­op­ments that chil­dren go through dur­ing their first years, the par­ents expressed that they often didn’t realise that the child had acquired the capac­ity to for exam­ple actively reach for a cup until the acci­dent had already occurred.

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I just had a lovely email exchange with Louice, who runs 2 vol­un­teer led baby and tod­dler groups in a Berwick-upon-Tweed in the North of Eng­land. 40 fam­i­lies use the group she has started to get together, sup­port each other and have fun.

Pre­cisely what play­groups are all about — see my pre­vi­ous blog posts on cof­fee morn­ing / play­group safety, what to serve and other tips.

Due to safety rea­sons, Louice avoids serv­ing hot drinks to par­ents in her groups. Smart.

But she inquired about the Mum­my­Mug to be able to instead serve hot drinks safely — smarter!!

As they oper­ate on a shoe­string bud­get, we have dis­cussed a coop­er­a­tion whereby we could con­sider spon­sor­ing the group with mugs once it reaches the market.

Let’s hope we can make that hap­pen! I can’t wait to hear the sto­ries and see the pics from the happy faces of Mums and Dads finally being able to enjoy their tea again. Thanks again Louise for get­ting in touch!

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In many play­groups, the mem­bers sim­ply take turns host­ing the play­group in their own homes. Which is not only an afforable but also very warm and friendly way to organ­ise a suit­able venue. But espe­cially if the play­group is organ­ised in a home envi­ron­ment, it is use­ful to agree on some Ground Rules and take some sim­ple mea­sures, to keep it safe for every­body and avoid unnec­es­sary dam­age to your belong­ings. Because as much as your home prob­a­bly is adapted to the life of one tod­dler or two, it is quite dif­fer­ent to have per­haps as many as ten run­ning around.

- Own­er­ship. Spell it out the obvi­ous: every­one is respon­si­ble for safety. Although you’ll surely want to chat and relax, each Mum must actively keep at least one eye on their own children.

- Overview. Cleary decide in which area of your home the play­group par­tic­i­pants should stay — prefer­ably in an open space where the adults can sit down but always can see the kids. Check the floor care­fully for any small for­got­ten items and toys that tod­dlers could choke on. — Make sure that any gates in front of stairs are securely closed.

Don’t be shy to close off the rest of your home: lock the door to your home office and if pos­si­ble, try to close off the kitchen so that no chil­dren can wan­der in there unsu­per­vised. Also put toys that you know your child for sure does not want to share or would not like to see get bro­ken, in one of the off-limits rooms.

- Pro­tec­tion. In the area you do pro­vide as play space, remove all frag­ile items or at least put them out of tod­dler reach. Cover that white couch with a blan­ket that eas­ily can be thrown in the wash.

- Pro­vide a cen­tral play point. Put a blan­ket on the floor in the mid­dle of the room, and put the toys you would like to share in the group on it. It will  make it an invit­ing place for the kids to sit and play together in a place where you can see them.

- Make it pos­si­ble for them to run around safely. Remove any rugs on which kids who run around play­ing hide-and-seek eas­ily could trip and fall. If you have fur­ni­ture with sharp cor­ners, con­sider plac­ing cor­ner covers.

- Stay healthy. Agree that any child (or Mum) with a fever, stom­ach virus or other trans­mit­table dis­ease stays away from the play­group meet­ing. Agree that all kids wash their hands before they grab the snacks.

-  Keep it spill-free. Serve the kids drinks in small car­tons with straws, and serve tea and cof­fee to the adults in lid­ded cups, such as the Mum­my­Mug, to avoid spillage and scalds. Never ever leave for exam­ple a ket­tle or a teapot on the table, but serve and put it back in the kitchen.

- But just in case… Check in advance where you have your first aid kit and that it is still prop­erly stocked with band aids — so you know where to look should an acci­dent still happen.

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I stum­bled across this video on Home Safety on YouTube, posted by the UK Depart­ment for Chil­dren, Schools and Families.

Of course curi­ous what their pos­si­ble mes­sage on the risks of scalds from hot bev­er­ages would be. And indeed: they cer­tainly high­light the dam­age that can be caused by show­ing the acci­dent as it hap­pens from the child’s point of view. A pow­er­ful way of illus­trat­ing the risks we take, or let our chil­dren take, rather, and to make us feel the dan­ger in our bones. The voiceover com­ple­ments the images: for us adults, a spilled cup of cof­fee means a 2-minute has­sle to re-boil the ket­tle. But for your child, it can mean two months in hos­pi­tal to  treat the skin grafts.

How­ever — where I don’t agree is on their pre­ven­tion strat­egy. The father in the clip places the cof­fee cup in the mid­dle of the table as a pre­ven­tive move.

That is good.

But I do believe the Mum­my­Mug is a way bet­ter. Just like the mother in the video clip places a secu­rity gate in front of the stairs to pre­vent a fall, we should choose for a smart solu­tion also for scald­ing burns.

This inspired me to do some­thing long over­due: to update the sec­tion of the Mum­my­Mug home­page on the real­ity of scald­ing burns: now you can find a range of sta­tis­tics, reports and, last but not least, tips and a video instruc­tion on how to deal with a scald, should the acci­dent nev­er­the­less hap­pen. Hope you will find it useful!

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