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Although the official first day of winter isn’t until next week, it feels as though we’ve been in it for a while.

No one wants to keep kids cooped up inside, so how can families best enjoy winter while staying safe?

Dr. Daniel Rosenfield, an emergency physician at The Hospital for Sick Children, talks about “risky play” activities beneficial to kids — things like tobogganing or sledding. I spoke with Rosenfield about finding the balance between risky play and minimizing injuries.

What kind of conditions are best for tobogganing?

Make sure you’re going out during the day. Unless the hill is very well lit, you want to keep this activity to daytime. Visibility is important; don’t go sledding in a white-out or snowstorm. The best conditions are fresh or powdered snow. After freezing rain is the worst time. Regardless of conditions, and depending on the age of the kids, it might be worth having an adult go down first to make sure there are no icy patches.

The hill should be open, free of debris and obstacles. Pay attention to the bottom of the hill; make sure it doesn’t go into a busy street. It sounds obvious, but every year we hear about kids sliding into the road.

Also, you want an area that’s not too crowded and age-appropriate for your child — you’re not going to send your three-year-old down a hill that’s better suited to a 13-year-old.

My kids have a collection of ‘magic carpets’ and ‘flying saucers’ — are they OK?

Sleds come in different shapes and sizes — anything from carpets and inner tubes to more structured racers with steering wheels and brakes. I recommend the latter. Inherently, sheets of hard plastic are unstable; more people are going to fall off them, potentially with more speed and less control. A lot of the bad crashes we see involve kids who have lost control on a magic carpet.

Should my kids wear a helmet tobogganing?

Yes. While there are no formal policies, the Canadian Paediatric Society recommends helmets for sledding.

A hockey or ski helmet is best because they’re more robust and designed for harder impacts. These helmets can be expensive, and I don’t want to alienate anyone from wearing something. So, if you have a bike helmet, that’s better than nothing but it’s not the optimal helmet.

What else should my kids wear on the hill?

Lots of layers are your best bet. Depending on your speed, you’ve got a wind chill on the way down. Even if it’s only zero degrees, if you’re going 15 km/h down a hill, that’s colder. And hiking up a hill can be tiring. So, if you’re freezing on the way down and super-sweaty on the way up, you’re going to want layers. Avoid scarves or mittens attached by long strings — anything that can get caught.

Any other sledding safety tips?

No one should ever go down a hill head-first. Ever. For the most part, sledding injuries are relatively benign — scrapes, bruises and lacerations. But every once and a while we see a severe or traumatic injury, which, typically are head injuries.

Finally, kids should always be supervised while sledding. I can’t emphasize this enough.

When my kids want to just play outdoors, what should I be thinking about?

Make sure they stay clear of snowblowers. Kids shouldn’t operate a snowblower and shouldn’t be around an adult who is. Kids and snowblowers don’t mix — full stop.

The same holds true of snowplows. Kids love to look for snowplows, so when they come by, please make sure your kids are not near the road. Also, kids should not be playing in or on snowbanks alongside the road.

We’re in the shortest days of the year, so wearing reflective clothing is a really good idea. You can even clip a little bike light to your kid’s jacket, or attach a flashing or reflective armband. These are great, especially at dusk.

If I’m taking an infant out in a stroller — how can I make sure she stays warm?

Babies have high metabolic rates, but they don’t move around a lot. Because they don’t generate a lot of heat, they need to be bundled very well. Try to minimize exposed skin. Fortunately, most infant outdoor clothing is basically a big, warm sack. The head loses a lot of heat, so you’ll want to make sure your baby is wearing a hat.

Remember to de-layer your baby when you come back inside. Babies, especially newborns, aren’t great at regulating their temperature. So, if you keep them in minus-30 clothing, they can become overheated.

I should also mention when you’re taking your baby in the car, you cannot put her in the car seat with her snowsuit or puffy coat. You have to undress your baby to base layers before putting her in the car seat. You can lay a blanket overtop the seat if necessary once she’s buckled in, but not while wearing bulky clothes. The straps are tightened to the size of your child without all the layers. Plus, a baby or small child could wriggle out of a coat.

It’s important to know that it can happen. And the easiest solution is the removal of the problem, which is the cold, says Dr. Daniel Rosenfield, an emergency physician at The Hospital for Sick Children.

For younger kids, it’s not as big a deal because when they’re uncomfortable they’ll cry, and parents will usually end the activity.

But it’s on the ski hill, for example, when a child who has maybe forgotten her goggles is having too much fun and doesn’t realize her face has become a bit frostbitten.

Minor frostbite is when your skin becomes red and painful. You might also see some swelling.

The worst frostbite is when extremities look kind of white and feel numb. If that happens, you should bring your child to the hospital.

The most common error we see with frostbite is that when you come inside, you start rubbing it. Rubbing can worsen the tissue damage if you’re aggressive. We recommend slowly warming the skin with warm air or water.

But the best “treatment” is prevention. So be sure to bring kids in from outside when it’s really cold. If they’re having fun, they might ignore the signs of frostbite, so check in with them frequently.

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