Kid Safe

Saturday was the Kid Safe Fair. Parents took their kids and there were displays about health and safety. The hospital had a table with nformation about diabetes. There were tables about vision and hearing. There was a car that parents could use to learn to correctly attach the specific car seat they owned. Smokey Bear and Eddie Eagle were there teaching forest fire and gun safety.

My agency had a table with information about tobacco and alcohol.TATU (Teens Against Tobacco Use) is also sponsored by our agency and they had that ugly bottle of tar and lots of facts about what tobacco does to lungs. They didn't have their usual pig lung display, because we didn't have enough space, but many a time I've sat at the other end of the table while they show how the healthy lungs inflate and hold air and the smoked lungs don't. That bottle of tar, by the way is the amount of tar that a person who smokes one pack a day get in their lungs in one year.

The teens I work with brought the Fatal Vision Goggles and traffic cones. We set up an obstacle course, and then people put on the goggles and tried to walk it. Parents tried. Their kids tried. One 18 month old toddler came over a couple of times and, very intently, picked up the cones one by one and stacked them.

Juneau being a small town, I saw people there who I used to work with on parenting issues. I saw their kids -- older now, some babies who are now teens, some middle schoolers who are now adults with babies of their own. I got hugs and my co-workers were bragged to about what a good job I did. My teens did a wonderful job of explaining things to little kids, helped at a few other tables when ours was quiet -- one young lady even did a stint as Eddie Eagle.