Ready Kids › Home Alone Ready › Badge 7 › Lesson 7.3
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Burns and bumps
Cool a burn under running water for twenty minutes, and watch a head bump, telling a parent either way.
1Look
The two that actually happen
The two that actually happen
Two panels: a red mark on a wrist beside a kettle with steam coming from it, and a small kid holding the side of her head next to the corner of a table.
Not dramatic. These are the two most likely things to happen to somebody in your house this year.
2The idea
Burns
Cool running water, straight away, for twenty minutes. Not cold, not ice: cool, from the tap. Twenty minutes is longer than you think. It is long enough to be boring, and boring is the sign you are doing it right. Take off a watch or ring near the burn before it swells.
No ice, no butter, no cream, no toothpaste. Ice makes the damage worse; anything greasy holds the heat in and has to be scrubbed off later. Cool water, twenty minutes, nothing on it. Then a parent looks. Bigger than your hand, or on the face or hands, or white or badly blistered: 911, and keep cooling while you wait.
3The idea
Bumps
A bump on the head: most are nothing, and you cannot tell in the first minute. Stay with them. Sit them down. Something cold wrapped in a cloth on the bump is fine. Watch.
Call 911 if they were knocked out even for a second, they are sick, they are confused or very sleepy, they cannot remember what happened, or they have a fit. Otherwise: tell a parent, even if they seem fine. The parent watches them tonight. That is not you being dramatic. It is the rule for heads.
4The idea
Ava, Mia, and the kettle
Steam from the kettle, a red wrist. Ava: tap on, cool, wrist under it. Mia wants to stop at two minutes. Ava puts a twenty-minute timer on her phone and a cartoon on next to the sink. Message to Mum: Mia burnt her wrist on kettle steam, under the tap now, twenty mins, she’s ok.
Mum is home in fifteen and the wrist is still under the tap. Two days later Mia bumps her head on the table. Ava sits with her, cold flannel, watches, and tells Mum that night. Both times the boring thing was the right thing.
5Try it
Pick the treatment
Four options
A burn, then a bump. For each, four things you could do. Tap one. The wrong ones explain, in one line, what they would have done to the burn or the head.
The frozen peas one is the tempting wrong answer. Read why.
6Decide
Your brother has grabbed a hot pan handle. His palm is red.
Pick one to carry on.
7Say it
The burn rule
Say it like you are telling somebody who wants to stop
“Twenty minutes. Cool tap. Nothing on it.”
You will say it to a little brother who is bored at minute three. Say it again at minute nine.
8Find them
Head bump. Which of these mean call 911?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Run the cold tap and hold your hand under it while you count to sixty. Now you know how one minute of it feels. A burn gets twenty of those.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Cool water, long enough to be boring. No ice, no butter, no cream. Head bump: stay, watch, tell.
Next lesson: The order