Skip to main content
Home
  • Home
  • About us
    Back
    About us
      • Our people
      • Our fire stations
      • Fleet and equipment
      • How we respond to emergency calls
      • Community Risk Management Plan
      • Information and data transparency
      • What we spend
      • Our performance
      • Request information
      • Have your say
        Back
        Have your say
        • Complaints
        • Compliments
      • Developing our Service
      • Our environmental strategy
      • Equality and diversity
      • Work with us
      • Covid-19 response
      • Fire Authority
      • Fire, rescue and safety training (Red One)
      • Firefighters' pensions board
  • Newsroom
    Back
    Newsroom
    Fire hydrant hanging on a blue wall
    News
    17 Aug 2022

    Dawlish man pleads guilty to fire safety offences

    Elsie doing a breathing apparatus exercise
    News
    01 Aug 2022

    Help us to recruit on-call firefighters

    • Incidents
    • Featured news
    • News
    • Events
    • Social media
  • Safety advice
  • Careers
    Back
    Careers
      • Vacancies
      • Become an on-call firefighter
        Back
        Become an on-call firefighter
        • Application process (on-call)
        • On-call firefighter pay
        • How on-call firefighters benefit businesses
      • Become a wholetime firefighter
        Back
        Become a wholetime firefighter
        • Application process (wholetime)
      • The role of a firefighter
      • The role of a fire control operator
        Back
        The role of a fire control operator
        • Become a fire control operator
      • Support staff roles
      • Looking after our people
        Back
        Looking after our people
        • Embracing equal opportunities
        • Supporting women in the Service
      • Pay rates
      • Benefits
      • Request a careers talk
  • Education and young people
    Back
    Education and young people
      • Early years, reception and year one
      • Primary schools
        Back
        Primary schools
        • Fire and road safety resources
        • Great Fire of London
        • Primary school fire safety visits
      • Secondary schools
      • Fire starting behaviour in children
      • Young drivers
      • Join the fire cadets
      • Work experience
Search

People often search for...

When should I test my smoke alarm?
Home safety visits
Thatch fire safety
Report a problem with a fire hydrant
Wildfires

Contact

  • Contact us
Accessibility Tool
  • Zoom in
  • Zoom out
  • Reset
  • Contrast
  • Accessibility help

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. What safety advice are you looking for?
FacebookTwitterEmailWhatsappMessenger Share

How to talk to your children about fire safety

It’s important to have sensible and age-appropriate conversations with children to help them to understand the risks of fire, and what to do if there is a fire at home.

How to talk to children about smoke alarms

Children need to understand what it means when a smoke alarm sounds.

  • Get your children involved in testing your smoke alarm and talk to them about what to do if the smoke alarm sounds.
  • If you accidentally set off the alarm through cooking, talk calmly about what you are doing to silence the alarm. Explain that you know the alarm is telling you there is smoke from the cooking, but if the sound was from another reason for smoke, you would get out in case there was a fire.

Do children hear smoke alarms?

Research conducted in 2017 found that a smoke alarm would not wake the large majority of children. However, it is unlikely that a young child would be sleeping alone in a house, so an adult would hear the alarm and wake the child.

Children may be frightened by the sound of a smoke alarm – particularly if they have additional needs. We recommend that when you do your smoke alarm testing, you also practise your escape plan with your child. This will help them to get used to the sound and also stay calm and know exactly what to do. This is what happens in fire drills in schools.

Home safety technician testing a smoke alarm by pressing the button. A mum and her two children are set next to him - the older child is covering his ears and the mum is covering the ears of the younger boy.

Learn about smoke alarms

Watch this video with your children.

Remote video URL

How to talk to your children about fire safety

Give children under five years old clear instructions of what they should and shouldn’t do. With older children, it’s better to also explain why.

You will probably need to talk about fire safety more than once, to make sure they have remembered and understood what you have taught them. Tell them:

  • never to play with matches, lighters, or lighted candles and to tell a grown-up if they see matches or lighters lying around
  • never to play, or leave toys close to a fire or heater
  • not to pull on electric cables or fiddle with electrical appliances or sockets
  • never to switch on the cooker or put anything on top of it
  • never touch any saucepans on the cooker.

Explain that fire is not a toy and that it can hurt and cause damage.

A memorable rhyme for young children:

“matches, lighters, never touch, they can hurt you very much”

How to talk to your children about escape plans

It’s important that the children in your home know what to do in the event of a fire, but you need to take care of how to do this without frightening them.

When making the fire escape plan include the children; everyone in the house needs to know what to do.

  • Practise and go through the fire escape plan together – practise in the dark too.
  • Download our printable escape plan sheet (PDF) and go through this with the children.
  • When talking to children refer to what they do at school in their fire drill – and apply that to your home situation.

In school, children will regularly practice what to when the fire alarm goes off. Though the first time they hear the fire alarm at school they may have been scared, with time and reassurance from their teachers, they realise the importance of knowing what to do and how to behave in an emergency situation.

Watch a video for children about escape plans and bedtime routines

Watch this video with your children.

Remote video URL

Fire safety advice for parents and guardians

Find out more

Education and young people

Find out more

Electrical safety

Find out more

Footer menu

  • Home
  • About us
      • Our people
      • Our fire stations
      • Fleet and equipment
      • How we respond to emergency calls
      • Community Risk Management Plan
      • Information and data transparency
      • What we spend
      • Our performance
      • Request information
      • Have your say
      • Developing our Service
      • Our environmental strategy
      • Equality and diversity
      • Work with us
      • Covid-19 response
      • Fire Authority
      • Fire, rescue and safety training (Red One)
      • Firefighters' pensions board
    • Newsroom
      • Incidents
      • Featured news
      • News
      • Events
      • Social media
    • Safety advice
    • Careers
        • Vacancies
        • Become an on-call firefighter
        • Become a wholetime firefighter
        • The role of a firefighter
        • The role of a fire control operator
        • Support staff roles
        • Looking after our people
        • Pay rates
        • Benefits
        • Request a careers talk
    • Education and young people
        • Early years, reception and year one
        • Primary schools
        • Secondary schools
        • Fire starting behaviour in children
        • Young drivers
        • Join the fire cadets
        • Work experience

Translate the website

Footer contact

  • Contact us

Staff login

Always call 999 in an emergency

Did you find this page useful

  • Yes
  • No

Follow us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • Follow us
  • Print this page

Footer bottom

  • Our website
  • Sitemap
  • Cookies
  • Privacy notices
  • Modern Slavery Act 2015
  • Accessibility

Mindful Employer logoDisability Confident employer logoEmployers Network for Equality and Inclusion logoBritish Quality Foundation logoEmployers network for equality and inclusion logoFire pride and allies logo