"Mom Lets Me Go There"

The Role of Environment and Supervision in Children's Minor Injuries

Abstract

The majority of parents' and children's experience with injury involves minor injuries. In this study, mothers recorded each injury occurrence and reported bi-weekly on their 8-9 year-old children's minor injuries. Children had relatively few injuries in those environments usually thought to involve risk (e.g., bathrooms,tairs); instead, children were injured in those environments in which they spent the most time. Two exceptions were playgrounds and roadways, which constituted the two largest injury categories and which also resulted in the highest proportion of potentially serious injuries. Level of supervision was found to vary by location, with vigilant supervision present in the majority of injuries in the kitchen, playing field, car, and bodies of water. Future research can profit from investigation of par- ents' and children's perceptions of environmentally-based risk for minor and major injury and must focus on the extent to which supervision can actually mitigate risk in different environments.