Playground Equipment Warning

Playgrounds are fun, especially for young children. But there is a new warning out about one piece of equipment, and it's a very common site at playgrounds.

We're talking about the slide. For one set of children, it can cause a leg fracture.

A new study looked into children who had broken their tibia, that's the big bone in the bottom half of the leg. The researcher doing this study found that for those under 3 years of age, 14% of the tibia fractures happened when the child went down a slide sitting in their parent's lap.

When you think about it, it seems to make sense to hold a child this young in your lap for a trip down the slide. They are usually too young to hold themselves up and slide down without getting hurt. So, going down sitting on mom's or dad's lap should help. But what happens is that the young child's foot often gets caught on the side of the slide while they are going down together and it gets twisted. This twisting causes the tibia fracture. Often times the parent doesn't even realize this has happened. They just notice their child is crying and won't put any weight on the fractured leg.

For the most part, these types of fracture just require a few weeks in a cast and heal well. But for the parent, it can leave some lasting guilt feelings. So your best bet, is to wait on the slide until your child is old enough to go it on their own.