I’ve started a new job this summer at my children’s preschool. Well it’s their preschool now, but it used to be mine. It happens to be the same school that my own mommy brought me to when I was their age. It’s also located at my church, so I have many long standing friends, memories and reasons to enjoy spending time there.

But in order to work at the preschool, you must complete a certain number of training hours. These hours include CPR training and First Aid. This past Saturday I spent 5 hours learning everything from how to dislodge a hot dog from a child’s throat to how NOT to treat a burn. I came home that afternoon flush with my newfound knowledge and promptly proceeded to stuff it down my friend’s throats.

About the time their eyes began to gloss over, I remembered that I have the perfect media in which to enlighten multiple unsuspecting civilians at once. My EV Mom’s blog.So here goes, in no particular order. And I could go on forever, but I’ll just list the items I suspect might help my fellow parents. You are my target audience after all.

Rule #1 - We live in the city. If your child gets hurt and you feel like you might be too freaked out to drive him or her to the hospital, you probably are. Call an ambulance. The response time is about 3.5 minutes to your home.

Rule #2 - If you need to call 9-1-1 for any reason, try your best to call from a landline. Cell phones are great on the highway, but a landline will get help to your location much faster and more accurately.

Rule #3 - Part A: When cleaning a wound, wear gloves. For your sake as well as the person you’re helping. There are a lot of diseases out there in the world that a person can carry without knowing it.

Part B: Wash the wound with soap and water ONLY. No creams, Hydrogen Peroxide, Alcohol or Iodine. Just soap and water. Then ice it and bandage it if necessary. You are only allowed to use tweezers if it’s your own child.

Rule #4 - If you or your child knocks out a tooth, baby or adult, place it in milk and take it with you to the dentist. The milk keeps it clean and most of the time the tooth can be put back in. I know, why replace a baby tooth? So that the other teeth don’t crowd in around the hole causing problems later for the adult teeth.

Rule #5 - Do NOT put anything on a burn except water until the heat is out. Putting anything on a burn (including a sunburn) just keeps the heat in and makes the burn worse. If the heat can’t escape, it will go back down and further into your skin. For those old wives out there, we do not use condiments on a burn!

Rule #6 - When in doubt, call Poison Control. The number is (800) 222-1222. They’re open 24/7 and can answer any question from where to store your cleaning products and medicines safely to how to treat a bee sting. They love to hear from you.

Rule #7 - Antibacterial soap is not a good idea. This stuff kills just as many good bacteria as bad. Our overuse of this product is creating supernova strains of nastier and nastier bugs and therefore making our children sicker by the day. Regular soap is just as good if not better for everyday use.

That’s it for now. My compliments to Moira, my fabulous CPR/First Aid teacher. She made learning this stuff (and much more) fun and interesting. Moira, if you’re reading this - I hope I’ve passed on just a little of your wisdom today.

It’s happened. I’m turning 30 in a month, and I’ve officially lost my mind.I’m not crazy or anything, (I don’t think..), but the things my brain has forgotten lately is staggering. If you tell me something this morning, I will have forgotten what it was by this afternoon. If I walk out of a room to grab a hammer, I will come back in with a pencil. And I won’t know why I’m holding that pencil when I get back.

My attention span is five seconds long, and I physically cannot concentrate on anything long enough to finish a project.

Today I started cleaning in the living room and picked the socks up off the floor. I took the dirty socks into the laundry room to put them in the hamper, at which point I saw the washing machine. This reminded me that I needed to run a load, so I started the water running. While the water ran I remembered that I was boiling macaroni in the kitchen. I went back to stir the noodles. I check, and there’s five more minutes on the timer. Perfect! Just enough time to empty the dishwasher. I took all of the glasses from the top rack and I walked across the kitchen with them toward the refrigerator. My eye caught my laptop on the counter. Any new mail? Yes, something from Karli. Now where was I? Oh yes, stir the noodles. Back to the laptop to check my email. Oops, I just did that. What was I doing? Oh, picking up the living room. A pile of books here, a few toys into the corner… what are my heels doing down here? Return the shoes to my closet upstairs. While I’m upstairs I see all the laundry on the bathroom floor from the night before. Laundry? Laundry! Oh no, my washer is running with no clothes or soap in it! A quick sprint down the stairs, add the soap and the clothes. We’re good to go. Now where was I? Dishes. I was emptying the dishwasher. Back into the kitchen for the umpteenth time. What’s that smell? Oh my god, I’ve burned the macaroni. Again.

Is there a restart button on this thing?

Alright, so I was a little frustrated during last night’s blog. Here’s the explanation.First let me tell you where we went because that’s kind of my job here. My friends and I took our five kids all 6 years and under to a Bounce U. The bouncers and slides were clean, the room was a perfect size that your children never got too far away from you, and the pizza was delivered from Papa John’s. As an institution it was clean, fun and safe.

My issue began after pizza when the big kids arrived in our play room.

The rules state that the workers at Bounce U are not babysitters and adults are told to stay on the premises. (Some don’t.) The rules state that parents should watch their children at all times. (Some didn’t.) And there are a variety of other safety rules pertaining to using mats on the slides, occupancy of bouncers, and waiting your turn so that you don’t land on the exiting child below. (Kids don’t read signs.)

This is where things went downhill for me. With absent parents and kids running around like crazy, the teenagers in charge are forced to police the 12-year-olds while trying to keep a chipper disposition. (I think it’s in the job description.) But the teenagers aren’t as good at acting like authority figures as they are at smiling and playing with the younger kids. So, you know me, I had to step in once in a while.

The big kids were cutting in line in front of my kids, running up the slide and jumping off things they shouldn’t, one slammed into my son’s back while he was getting off the bottom of the big slide, etc. etc.

The good news is that my kids loved Bounce U and want to go back. And the better news is that they have Preschool Playdates for 6 and unders during some weekdays.

So we’ll be back soon, Bounce U. But not at night.

My kids are still pretty small, so I need to consult with a mother of older children. Does something happen in the course of raising your kids that after they reach a certain age you just give up on the basic teachings of turn-taking, rule-following and general kindness toward others?Perhaps it’s foolish, but I assumed that after working constantly on these traits with my kids for the first, I don’t know, 8 years of their lives that they’d be so versed in common courtesy I would barely need to mention it anymore. Because you go out into the world and the only parents you actually see pushing these virtues are the mothers and fathers of the preschool set.

The problem is the older children I run into are often (but not always) so impatient, pushy and rude that it makes me wonder if we aren’t giving up too early on their training. Maybe it takes 13 years to get it right. Maybe it’s more.

Is it laziness or is it carelessness that once our children are no longer tiny we stop worrying about the other small children around us? Because you walk into a playground or a mixed aged environment and the big kids are literally running over the small ones. Hardly ever does a mom even watch their children at a park anymore if that child is over 8, much less scold them for running down a two-year-old. But the preschool moms are always out in force, watching each others kids like hawks and stepping in even when their own child was not involved.

Something must happen after a child turns 8. Our perceived notion of “duty” is over, and they’ve been raised as good as they’re going to get. Well it’s not good enough.

If your child is running down my child and you aren’t watching, I’m going to say something to them. And then I might say something to you - if I can find you. I’ll be nice about it, for sure. There’s no reason to get angry about these things. But please watch your own children so that I don’t have to?

It takes a village to raise a child - but you’re supposed to be helping.