Stories like this give me the major willies. It amazes me sometimes how young a child can be and have enough smarts to be somewhat self-sufficient. What amazes me more is that some parents don’t teach their children at even that young age to learn to call 911.
At the age of 2 we had already drilled into my son’s head his full name, street address, and telephone number. We showed him how to dial three simple numbers on the telephone. We told him “If you can’t wake Mommy/Daddy up, pick up the phone and press these three numbers. Say ‘Mom/Dad won’t wake up. Please help me. My name is…and I live at…’” We would quiz him on this information at any time (and still do). We explained that if he couldn’t wake us by shaking or shouting then to pinch our nose hard or as a last resort to slap us on the forehead (to avoid an unneeded call if we were just sleeping hard).
This girl could have easily died if she hadn’t inadvertantly left the water running. She wouldn’t have saved her dad by calling 911, but she could save herself.
Parents of young children and would-be parents, please do yourself and your kids a favor and teach them these basic tips. It could save their lives and yours.
Actually, my daughter is only now just two last month, and she knows what she wants and where it is in the fridge, and what she wants in the cabinets as well. She just doesn’t have the strength to pull the powerfull suckage of the fridge open - yet.
I suspect it won’t be long, and to tell you the truth, I’m glad that girl survived and I hope mine would too given the same circumstance.
I agree, Horseflesh… how utterly frightening! My heart goes out to that poor lil’ angel. What a terrifying thought because my daughter is three and a half, autistic, and she does NOT know this vital information. She’s just learning to talk due to the autism and these kinds of real-life situations and much worse hypothetical scenes I play out in my mind, scare the HELL out of me!! Makes for some troubled sleep, let me tell you. Thank God for my folks, my mother especially for checking up on us daily, sometimes a few times during the day.
I agree. It is absolutely terrifying. My three nieces were taught this information at young ages. My sister and I both thought they should know such things.
It’s amazing how many children have come into my care that didn’t even know their full names or their parents’ names. All they knew were mom and dad. I’ve tried suggesting to the parents they teach their children how to call 911. I haven’t had much luck.
Thank you for sharing the article, Horseflesh. I’ll print it out and place it on the board at my facility. Perhaps this will be the push they need.
stories like this seem to appear in the paper chillingly often. maybe it’s the result of the increasing number of one-parent households with no other relatives close by. one story reported that a young child got herself to school one morning when her mother wouldn’t wake up and told her teacher that she thought mom might be dead. the teacher punished her for lying. it took authorities a couple of days to find out that the poor kid was telling the truth.
if a kid is too young to understand how to dial 911 maybe a phone could be preprogrammed to dial 911 when one button is pressed (“if you need help press this button that mommy has painted red”). maybe it might also be possible to teach the kid to put a red flag in the front window in an emergency, or you could keep a green flag in the window all the time and tell the kid to just pull it down if there’s trouble. then tell your neighbors what the flags mean. maybe there’s some sort of flashing emergency light that could be put in the window and would be easy for a kid to turn on.
it might also be worth establishing a “buddy” system with another parent nearby. one calls the other at the same time every day, and they agree to check up on each other if they don’t touch base by phone.
What a tragic occurance, especially consideringthe other thread about someone dying unnoticed for days that was posted today. It is truly heartbreaking that the kid went through that ordeal all alone.
Teaching a kid how to get help in an emergency is definitely vital.
Of course, you also need to make sure the kids know that calling 911 is not something to play around with. Like, teach the kids to never make a false call to 911 or call about things that aren’t really emergencies.
I just thought that was important to mention because I’ve heard that 911 dispatchers have to deal with a whole lot of false alarms. A non-emergency call to 911 could possibly delay getting help to someone who really needs it.
oops, I’m so tired I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly when I wrote that other post. The other thread is about a lady who was ALMOST dead when she was found in her home. She wasn’t one who actually died, fortunately.
I don’t know the details, but there’s a way to have a porchlight set up to blink on an emergency switch like this. My mother-in-law lives in one of those “senior communities” and all the houses are set up with this switch by the front door so the ambulance can find the house fast if necessary. Not sure if you could duplicate something similar in an apartment where the hallways are indoors; maybe have it hooked to a light near an outside window?
Seems like the kid did OK on her own, perhaps she knew about dialing 911 but she had food, water, was safe and there was nothing anyone could do for her father.
Really what could 911 really do for her here anyway? She did what she needed to do.
me: I’ve been e-mailing Michael Ellis for a couple of days now, and he hasn’t e-mailed back. I think something might have happened to him, and there isn’t anyone to take care of his ant farm…
I always like to caution people about how much we DON’T know about situations reported in the newspaper.
For instance, even if the little girl knew how to call 911, that knowledge would do her no good if there was no phone in her reach in the household (a lot of people hang their phones on the wall too high for a young child to reach).
I am glad the little girl survived. I hope she’s as much a determined survior during the rest of a long and happy life.
Horseflesh’s suggestion is a great idea. Our oldest daughter was not verbal enough to learn a sentence like that (“Mom/Dad won’t wake up…”) until she was 3 though.
Could have taught her to dial 911 I suppose. Even a non-verbal child gets a response from the police. Now I feel bad that I didn’t. Gotta go find a different thread where I can feel like a better prepared parent.
True what Broomstick says about the phone being out of reach (and not knowing the full story). Of course, we wouldn’t have taught/shown my son that stuff without making sure he could actually do it (phones are with reach).
As for the little girl, it’s doubtful she was mindful enough to put the butter/mayo back in the fridge. They should have been going pretty bad by the time the police found her and if they hadn’t she could have vomited enough to really dehydrate herself. I guess another point I was trying to make is to make sure your kids know it’s not normal for you to sleep that long. In fact it can be a VERY BAD THING.
I serve low-income parents with very young children 3 and under, making home visits and I can tell you this is reality folks. What I encourage the families I work with again and again, is that they need support systems. They need people in their lives that will be concerned if they have not heard from this person in a day or two. Parents need to have other adults in their lives if they have young children and need a support system, for their own sanity as well as the good mental health of the children. Many of these children I work with would be dangerous if they knew how to use the phone and are often delayed in speaking.
