Are Your Children Ready to Respond During an Emergency?

It was around 4 p.m. when I received a 9-1-1 call from a 6-year-old girl telling me that her mom wouldn’t wake up. I had just recently started working part-time as an EMS dispatcher and dealing with a child on the phone was not something I had experienced. To say the least, this was nothing like I had expected. The girl was calm, informative and followed directions exactly as I instructed. She knew her address, her phone number, her mom’s medical condition and the closest relative to contact. This was a far cry from the hysterical full-grown adult I just disconnected with. I was amazed at how a child could remain calm during such a stressful situation.

This scenario got me thinking: Would my children perform like this? Are all children capable of remaining so calm under stress? The short answer to the second question is yes, but not without prior education and practice. Children have an amazing ability to detach emotionally and focus on the task at hand when it comes to stressful situations. While I may not be an expert on child behavior, I believe their lack of understanding of the true seriousness of the situation as well as what’s at stake has something to do with it.

I had the opportunity to speak with the mother of this child a month later when I was working my normal ambulance shift. We responded to her address for an unrelated medical emergency with a family member. She brought up the situation with her daughter calling 9-1-1 for her, so I asked her how she had prepared her daughter to respond like that. She explained she learned the hard way a year previously when her blood glucose dropped and her daughter didn’t know what to do. Hours went by before anyone knew to get help. This prompted her to speak to her child about “What to do if Mommy can’t wake up.” After my shift, I got home and spoke to my oldest daughter and asked her if she knew what to do if something were to happen to me. My heart sank when she said, “Well, I know I’m supposed to call 9-1-1, but you don’t have a house phone like mom does, and I don’t know the code to your phone.” As a paramedic, this is a difficult pill to swallow. How could I be so ill prepared? How many of us are in the same situation?

Spending time as a 9-1-1 dispatcher opened my eyes to the challenges of locating patients without a reliable caller. Obviously, this is not limited to children, but there are some simple procedures we can teach our children to ensure they can respond during a time of need.

Knowing when to call for help

Children are often taught in school to dial 9-1-1 in case of an emergency. However, where we fall short is teaching our children exactly what emergencies are. This doesn’t mean you should attempt to drill hundreds of scenarios into their heads. This can be as simple as “mom or dad can’t wake up,” or “someone is hurt really bad.” They need to understand when the situation is serious enough to call for help.

Knowing how to call for help

Have you ever practiced the act of dialing 9-1-1? It has been proven that fine motor function can be suppressed during high levels of stress UNLESS you train for it. While it may seem ridiculous now, dialing three specific numbers can be classified as a fine motor function. There have been several documented cases of people–including trained police officers–who struggled to dial numbers on a phone while under stress. How do you think your children are going to respond? Can they figure out how to unlock your phone or use the emergency dial function? Try practicing this with them. You can even take it a step further to teach them how to use the emergency dial function on other people’s phones in case they find themselves in an emergency while at a relative’s house, school, friend’s house, etc. Don’t let an emergency be the first time they attempt this.

Note: Please make sure that you unplug your phone or turn off your cellular data when practicing this to avoid inadvertently calling 9-1-1.

Knowing where to send help

Many dispatch centers have the ability to trace cell phone locations, but as many of us in EMS know, this isn’t always timely or accurate. Do your children know your home address? Are you sure that they will remember it should they ever find themselves needing to tell a dispatcher? It’s always a good idea to have a “go-to” location in your house in the event of an emergency. Try placing a box, book, bottle, etc., with all the information your child and the responders will need. Write your address down so your child can read it to the dispatchers in case they forget. You can also teach them to look for pieces of mail in the event that they are at someone else’s house. This becomes more challenging when your children are too young to read an address. In this situation, it could be beneficial to teach your child how to call 9-1-1 and find an adult (neighbor, bystander, etc.) to take over the phone call.

Knowing who to notify

Calling 9-1-1 is always going to be No. 1, but your child and the responders are going to need to know who to call who can care for the child and handle your affairs. This information can be stored in your “go-to” place. It also wouldn’t hurt to have your children memorize the names of the people who you have chosen to be contacted. A trick I learned growing up was to memorize a code word in the event that an adult that I didn’t know needed to pick me up. You can share this word with your close friends and acquaintances so that your children know that they are safe in their care.

Practice, practice, practice

It’s not enough to just talk about this sort of thing. Practice it with your children. This doesn’t have to be something you do daily, but it needs to be done with some regularity. Your children might roll their eyes and act annoyed when it comes time to do this, but make it concise and stress the importance. This is the only way that you can be sure that your children will act appropriately should they ever be called to act.

Do not underestimate the abilities of your children. I have been witness to several cases where young children were able to remain calm and in control. I have even been able to talk an 8-year-old through counting respirations and assessing the quality of breathing of an unconscious parent. I’ve instructed adults to hand the phone back to a child because they were a better source of information. On the flip side, I’ve seen the complete opposite. I’ve spent long periods of time attempting to get vital information out of a hysterical child. Educating your children about how and when to call 9-1-1 will pay off should you ever find yourself in a position of needing help.