Parents: beware of shopping carts, escalators
Aug 7th, 2006 by Lilian
I have my fair share of frights over these two things. Thank God, none of my children had fallen off a toppled shopping carts but I had seen enough cases in supermarkets to freak me out. Many times, parents just need to turn away for a minute to grab that box of milk off the shelf and an older child will probably gave the cart a hard push, causing the younger one who is standing to go off balance and fall to the ground. Sometimes, the whole cart laden with heavy groceries toppled along with the child.
The other thing is the escalators. Though I had travelled far and wide with a stroller and several children, I never once push a stroller up an escalator. I have this great phobia of my baby falling off the escalators. Yet, there are negligent parents who never even strap their baby to the stroller and casually go up and down an escalators.
One of my son had once pushed the stop button on an escalator, causing the people on the flights of stair to jerk. What if a parent was holding a stroller was on it? Of course, the kid was severely reprimanded and we had drilled into their skulls - NEVER TOUCH THE RED BUTTON. Remember that older children are normally very curious about the escalators and those buttons there. It is common courtesy to get pesky kids away from escalators. Discipline your children, parents. For their own good and the good of the public.
Escalators like those which snake through several storeys are very frightening to me. (Great Eastern Mall, for e.g.) Another example is the one in Ocean Park, Hong Kong. However, in Hong Kong, they have very strict rules of not allowing their customers to push a stroller on a moving escalator. I had once carried a baby and dragged three older kids, one of them a bigger boy who helped to shoulder the stroller, through Hong Kong’s amazing network of MTRs to museums and parks. I like the idea of carrying a baby and a stroller when on escalators and moving trains. So, remember to find a light weight stroller.
Read this from Reuters and be extra careful, parents!
Parents: beware of shopping carts, escalators
Mon Aug 7, 2006 5:34 AM BST
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Shopping carts, escalators and lawn mowers injure 35,000 American children every year and should be redesigned, researchers said on Monday.
Last year in the United States, 24,000 children were hurt badly enough to go to the hospital after falling out of shopping carts or topping over while they rode, a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics said.
Three-quarters of the injuries were to the head or neck.
Some children got injured when they were trapped in carts, or fell off while riding on the outside or while standing up inside the basket, the report published in the academy’s journal, Pediatrics, said.
i totally agree with you!! But I am a culprit! I do push the stroller up the escalator but never push it down because I don’t have the hang of balancing! The other thing to add on escalators and trolleys, never never push up a trolley on an escalator. I can’t get it why some people still do that and at one time I saw it with my own eyes two ladies, one pregnant pushing the trolley with a cart load of goods up the escalator. The obvious was there..ka-boom..stuck! Oh man I nearly fainted at the same time ran to their rescue. Later lectured the pregnant lady to becareful not to do that ever again especially she being PREGNANT and taking such risk! A trolley cannot be pushed up the escalator! Try it and risk going to heaven!
My fren once witness a toddler who fell out of the grocery cart at the Tesco escalator and got knocked repeatedly between the cart and the escalator. The mum was too shocked to reack when it happen. A passerby pulled the poor baby off the escalator. Scary man!