LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The snow may have mostly melted away, but the temperatures are expected to continue to plummet, making it not only uncomfortable for children who will be heading to school, but potentially dangerous if they aren't dressed appropriately.
"Don't let the sun fool you because it's still very cold out there," Erika Janes, a nurse at Norton Children's Hospital, said. "So we definitely say a rule of thumb is to have at least one layer more than an adult."
Janes, a prevention and wellness nurse, said she recommends parents to dress their children in layers, with a base layer and then added layers on top if they will be outside.
"We can't rely on our teenagers to dress themselves," Janes said. "We have to really make sure that our kids do have coats, hats, gloves or mittens when they leave the house. They just have to."
Janes warns that if children are outside for too long or don't have the proper clothing on, they could risk getting frostbite or hypothermia, which could be deadly if it's not caught early.
"The child becomes more sluggish," she said. "They may slur their speech. Their skin color may fade. Definitely if you start to see symptoms of that, that is a 911 call."
Aside from bundling up, Janes said children should try to stay out of the cold as much as possible, especially if the windchill will be below freezing, in which case she said children should only be outside as long as it takes them to get from the car to their destination.
"If your child is going to be waiting for the bus for 20 or 30 minutes, that's a long time to be outside in this cold that we are not used to," she said. "Your body is not used to it."
Norton Children's Hospital also stressed the importance of taking off big, puffy jackets before putting infants into car seats.
“A child may appear snug in their harness when they are wearing a jacket, but in reality the padding of the jacket will compress during a crash or a sudden stop,” Kinzie Evrard, a child safety seat expert with Norton Children’s Prevention & Wellness, said in their release.
Additionally, the hospital warned against leaving children unattended with blankets indoors. More information can be found here.
