Culture of Life

Mom Alarm

A formative, family-friendly factoid from a recent study or survey in the news.

BY John Lilly

November 26-December 2, 2006 Issue | Posted 11/22/06 at 11:00 AM

When it comes to rousing kids from sleep during an emergency, alarm systems are no match for mothers’ voices. In a recent study at Columbus Children’s Hospital in Ohio, mothers needed a median 20 seconds to wake their kids. And that was using a written script at a controlled volume level, not a screeching freak-out. Compare that with the average three minutes it took a 100-decibel fire alarm to do the job. The study was released in the October issue of Pediatrics.

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