What are common injuries within a nursery?

The injuries we tend to come across a lot with nurseries and child minding tend to be very, very varied. Small children will experiment with absolutely anything, and they tend to experiment with the mouth; so they will pick up things and put them into the mouth. So we get things like... We used to get a lot of problems with washing powder, the washing tabs that now are about. Children like to put them in the mouth and chew them, anything that is soft and spongy and that is perfect. And if they burst in the mouth, then you have got the washing powder, which contains hydrochloric acid which burns; you have got washing powders, which will burn on the skin when it comes into contact with sweat. You would also get children poking things into anywhere, so the ears and nose and mouth. They will plug lego bricks, tomatoes, you name it, if they can shove it up the nostril or into their ear, they will have to go and other children's ears and noses as well. So we do get a lot of that sort of stuff where somebody shoved a pea up the nose, or they have put a marble in their ear or they have swallowed a marble or they have burst something in the mouth that they should not. But they also tend to pull themselves up on table legs and pull the tables over, pull things off the table down on to them.

But what we have got to remember is children are very resilient; they are very soft and supple. They tend to bounce very well. Although we are not supposed to be dropping children, children do tend to bounce rather than get injured. The ribcage is not formed properly, so the majority of the time the small bumps and scratches and grazes are easily managed, but very occasionally we do get some very traumatic situations where children have got curtain hangers around the neck and strangulation, and this type of stuff from crawling onto or into something that they should not really have had access to. So the real key with child minding and nursery care is to never take your eyes off children at any point. Never put things down within reach. Make sure there is nothing hanging that they can pull on to themselves. And if in doubt, move it; it's one of those things that if a child can get into it, they will.