Picture your party from a small child's viewpoint. So many interesting new things around, along with distracted adults. Grabbing or chewing on ornaments and pulling on trees send approximately 14,000 kids to hospitals nationwide every year. In some places, poisonings triple around the holidays, often because children ingest common household items, mistaking them for candy or food. 

Marcel Casavant, MD of Nationwide Children’s Hospital offers a few warnings: To curb injuries this season, parents should look at a holiday party from a kid’s perspective: they’ll quickly discover that decorations aren’t the only hazards.

Watch out for these indoor issues: 

Open purses = play lands. When a woman leaves her purse on the floor or on a chair, an unsupervised child has free reign over the contents of that bag, which may include hazardous items like cigarettes and prescription medication.

Unattended drinks = danger.

Hot drinks: Each year kids are scalded by hot drinks like coffee and hot chocolate that come tumbling after a small child tugs on a tablecloth or left on a low-set coffee table. 

Cold drinks: The most dangerous types of drinks, however, are the leftovers parents may forget about the next morning. Only a couple of sips of the near-empty wine or champagne glasses left out from the night before is enough to do some damage to a child.

Outdoor issues:

Ice melting pellets = ice cream beads. These pellets look a lot like ice cream beads and can seem pretty familiar to kids, but when a child ingests them they can cause irritation, vomiting and burning of the mouth and the skin.

Holiday light strings & plastic light-up figures:  The strings of lights can cause tripping hazards around steps and walkways. Sometimes outdoor light bulbs get hot and so does the plastic near them. Teach children not to touch.

If you’re attending or hosting a party this holiday season, take a moment to see the house and entryway from your kid’s level: it could put some unseen dangers into perspective and will keep your kids safe.



Marcel Casavant, MD is the chief of Pharmacology/Toxicology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where children are treated every year for holiday-related injuries.