Playground Safety

Each year, more than 150,000 children ages 14 and younger are treated in hospital emergency rooms for playground-related injuries.

Protect your child by following these safety and injury-prevention tips:

Playground safety tips

  • Supervise your child at all times.
  • Make sure your child wears a helmet or protective gear when using scooters, skates, skateboards or bicycles.
  • Teach your child not to jump for distance from the swings or other equipment.
  • Only use playgrounds that are age-appropriate and have safe surfacing like wood chips, mulch, sand, pea gravel or rubber under and around equipment.
  • Report dangerous playgrounds to the organization responsible for them.

Injury-prevention tips

To help prevent injuries, remind your child to:

  • Use playground equipment properly:
    • Always swing sitting down
    • Allow only one person on a swing at a time
    • Wait his turn on the slide
    • Sit on the slide, and slide on his bottom only
    • Use monkey bars for climbing only — not acrobatics
  • Play gently — pushing and roughhousing can lead to falls
  • Never wear jewelry, jackets with drawstrings or scarves when playing. They can get caught on playground equipment
  • Wear proper footwear, such as sneakers
  • Tell an adult if playground equipment does not look safe

Download our Playground Safety brochure

Our Playground Safety brochure is available for download in multiple languages: