Electrical safety
It's often hard to teach your children things that they can't really see to understand. There are many things they should know, but unless you can demonstrate them to them, they often can't quite understand what you are talking about. I guess I worry too much, but I like to warn my daughter about things that might not be a problem very often, but are certainly things that can happen. I recently had a chance to teach her about electrical safety, which was something that I had a hard time explaining to her before.
We had a bad thunderstorm one day, which is actually something that has been very common this summer. I could teach her about electrical safety by allowing her to view the lightning out the window, but the chance to really show her what it could do came most unexpectedly. We had a lighting strike that made it sound like something outside our house blew up, and sure enough, the lights went out immediately. I looked out the window a few minutes later to see exactly what had happened.
The lightning had hit a power line next to our house and snapped it in two. The end of the line was lying in a puddle of water in the street. This was the perfect time to explain electrical safety to her. I called 911 to report the wire, as I knew it might be live and anyone could come along and drive over it or step on it. One important part of electrical safety is to stay away from fallen lines, and I pointed it out to her along with the warnings about what could happen.
We watched as the fire trucks showed up and blocked the street because both ends of the snapped line were lying in the same street. I explained that not only is the wire live and could hurt her, the puddles around the wire could be charged as well. We watched in horror as a dog came close to it, but at the last moment ran the other way. She learned then that
electrical safety is as important for animals as humans, but that she should never risk her own life no matter what was going on. The fireman even spoke to her about it, for which I was grateful. I hope she learned something that might help her out in the future. It's rare to run into a live wire on the street, but you just never know what might happen.
