Why Our Family Feels Safer With Kidde Fire Safety

This post was sponsored by Kidde Fire Safety as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.

Our family of five stays pretty busy.  With three young kids, there is always a practice to go to, homework to complete or a ton of other things that can be forgotten in the day to day chaos.  But one thing that is not overlooked is the safety of our kids.  In a large crowd my wife is like a hawk, making sure our kids are right next to us.  If we are walking across a busy street, we use the crosswalks.  Another important thing is that every night we make sure our home alarm is set.  And trust me, there are a host of other situations that bring safety to the forefront of our minds.  Now like most moms, my wife can go a little overboard.  When our daughter started middle school, my wife parked across the street from the school and held my daughters hand as they crossed the street.  That was a no go and my daughter tried to jerk away but could not break free from my wife’s death grip.  As for me, I can have the lazy brain when it comes to safety.  That’s because my wife usually takes charge.

But one thing that we have come together on as parents is teaching our kids about fire safety.  Unlike setting your alarm each night, changing the batteries in your smoke alarm is not an everyday event.  We have found the best way to remember this is when daylight savings time rolls around in the spring and fall.  By just taking a short amount of time to replace the batteries and testing our alarms, it can protect our family for a lifetime.

My kids are very curious when I get up on a ladder and replace the batteries in our smoke alarms.  We use this opportunity to sit down and discuss what we should do in the case of a fire.  We test the alarms so they can here what they sound like.  Then we show them how we should escape the house and where to meet once we are out.  That night after they have fallen asleep, we go through the drill for real.  This really helps plant an understanding of fire safety within our kids.  The most critical moment in a home emergency could be the moment you take to prepare for that situation right now.

Here are some stunning statistics from the National Fire Protection Association: 

• NFPA stats show that in 2017 U.S. fire departments responded to 357,000 home structure fires
• Roughly 3 out of 5 fire fatalities occur in homes with no smoke alarms (or they don’t work)
• While 71% of Americans have an escape plan in case of a fire, only 47% of those have practiced
• Cooking equipment is the top cause of home fires, followed by heating equipment

Ultimately however, our fire safety plan hinges on the equipment we use.  Recently, we installed Kidde smoke alarms which also include carbon monoxide alarms.  Our family feels safer with Kidde Fire Safety because they help prevent injuries and minimize damage by alerting people to dangers earlier.  The ones we have use a voice to alarm us.  My kids love that!  So we make it a point to have working alarms and any other home safety essentials from Kidde.