Safely Covered
Head to Toe

As you glance around to check children's appearance before their parents arrive to pick them up, you notice that Kelly's overall strap is wet from the toilet. Tasha's fringed sleeves on her new shirt are covered in paint, Chris has lost a clog, Taylor's bell-bottom jeans leg was torn on the tricycle pedal, and Jamie has lost hair beads, which you hope no one has swallowed.

Clothing is a factor in the health, safety, development, and well-being of young children in many ways. Early care and education programs can support appropriate clothing through planning the curriculum and environment, establishing policies and procedures, and communicating with parents and guardians. Children's ages, the number of children in a setting, available learning space and activities, weather conditions, special needs, cultural backgrounds, and much more should influence decisions about clothing for children in group care.

Curriculum and Environment

How can you support children's health and safety regarding clothing through the curriculum and environment? Preschool children need daily opportunities to strengthen their small muscles. Buttoning, zipping, snapping, and putting on a jacket or coat helps meet that need. By periodically adding or removing seasonal clothing such as jackets, caps, gloves, umbrellas, and sun glasses to the dramatic play learning center, children learn how to dress for different temperatures and weather. It also is important to take appropriate routine care to keep the dress-up clothes clean.

Providing protective clothing and creating safety rules for the learning environment can assist children with learning to safeguard their bodies and establish positive health and safety habits. Common protective gear includes woodworking goggles, painting and water-play smocks, helmets, and knee pads. To help children become familiar with the protective gear and create awareness of the importance of taking care of their bodies, protective clothing and equipment should be kept where it can be used appropriately.

In addition, rules for wearing protective clothing must be established. For example, because head injury is the leading cause of death in bicycle crashes, teaching children to wear helmets is critically important. Store helmets near the tricycles, and enforce the rule of wearing a helmet when riding. Inform children that the helmet should only be worn when using a tricycle or other wheeled toy as it can cause entrapment if worn while on climbing equipment. Some children are apprehensive of unfamiliar equipment, so adding some of these protective materials to the dramatic play area and allowing children to role play and practice putting them on and taking them off may help.

While clothing is typically thought of as a protective covering, accidents do occur occasionally as a result of poorly designed clothing and accessories worn by children. Some common safety hazards related to children's clothing have been identified by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Safe Kids Campaign and other organizations. The danger of strangulation associated with drawstrings in jackets is high. Drawstrings at the waist also can be a hazard if the exposed string is more than three inches long.

Bell bottom pants, fuzzy shirts, or puffy sleeves can become entangled in tricycle pedals, climbing apparatuses, or doors. Strangulation may occur when drawstrings, ribbons, necklaces, and pacifier strings get wrapped around the necks of younger children. Small buttons, beads, and earrings can easily become choking hazards, especially for children less than three years old because of their small air passages and their tendency to put everything in their mouths. Because young children do not master alternate stepping until around three years of age, shoes that can easily slip off, such as clogs and sandals, can be dangerous as children attempt to balance on each step while descending stairs.

Polices and Procedures

What policies and procedures regarding children's clothing do you need? Although children may not want to wear shoes, especially between 19-24 months of age, you also should consider the importance of shoes in case of emergency evacuation and what your childcare regulations say about wearing shoes. It is sometimes hard to balance safety precautions against what we know about the natural rhythms and typical developmental stages of children.

Your program's health and safety policies and procedures may include a wide range of issues pertinent to children's clothing. Consider the following points:

• Decisions regarding curriculum and materials should be made to reflect what you want taught to children about dressing safely, preparing for the weather, and using protective gear.
• Programs need to determine how they will handle sanitation issues related to clothing. For example, to minimize germ exposure to staff and children, The ABC's of Safe and Healthy Child Care encourages programs to return soiled cloth diapers or clothes to parents without rinsing or washing.
• Displaying children's names prominently on their clothing can be a risk factor for abduction. For example, an abductor could easily spot the child's name, and then lure the child away by calling the child's name and claiming to be someone the child's family knows. Give serious consideration to how and where names are displayed.
• Implementing a dress code for children may minimize some safety concerns. Injuries can be caused by clothing that does not support children's activities. Because young children are active explorers of their environments, clothes suitable for action are most practical and safe. For toddlers and preschoolers, clothing that is appropriate to splashing, painting, digging, climbing, hopping, and other physical exploring is essential.

Communicating With Parents

What do you communicate to parents and guardians? As policies and procedures are made, it is necessary to consider any impact the decisions may have on the families and children. For example, families may find it very unpleasant to receive soiled clothes and may even punish children for soiling them. Even if they do not punish the children, it may ruin the parents' evening when what they really need is a break from a hard day at work. Requests for extra clothes or demands of the dress code may create financial struggles for low income parents.

It also is important to consider the various religious beliefs and values of families and how these may impact their reaction to dress codes. In an effort to ensure safety, you do not want to offend or diminish the importance of specific dress. The wearing of team and work uniforms, as well as the clothing, hats, shoes, and accessories representative of a family's background, beliefs, culture, and traditions are often rich, varied expressions of uniqueness or belonging. It also provides rich opportunities for learning experiences. The balance is a delicate one; therefore, frequent communication with families about clothing issues may help early care and education programs strike the right balance.

Kim McIntyre, MAE
and
Connie Jo Smith, Ed. D.
Training and Technical Assistance Services, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY

RESOURCES

I Am Amazing; A Program Promoting Health, Safety and Self-Esteem, Healthy Child Publications (the publisher of Healthy Childcare); 877-258-6178; www.healthychild.net

Growing, Growing Strong: A Whole Health Curriculum for Young Children, Redleaf Press; 800-423-8309; www.redleafpress.org

SunSafe Curriculum, Dartmouth Medical School; 603-650-1566; www.dartmouth.edu/dmssunsafe/preschool.htm

INTERNET RESOURCES

Adaptative Clothing, Apparel and Accessories, www.kansas.net/~cbaslock/clothing.html

Consumer Product Safety Commission, www.cpsc.gov

National Safe Kids Campaign, www.safekids.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=1151&folder_id=540

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