Danielle Lancieri Regalbuto was sick for nearly six weeks with a sinus infection that morphed into severe bronchitis. One morning, she was in her son’s room helping him get ready for school when a severe coughing fit overtook her and left her lying on the bedroom floor.
In a matter of minutes, her now 7-year-old son, Rocco, was on the phone with 911.
“The next thing I knew, Rocco was rubbing my back and told me that officials were on their way,” she told Care.com. “He remained next to me from the time it happened until authorities arrived.”
Regalbuto, who has frequent medical issues, began teaching her son what to do in emergency situations when he was just 4 years old.
“His preschool held a safety seminar on how to teach the children to dial 911, and one of the things that stuck with me was if you don’t have a landline, you have to teach your children their address and phone number so that emergency services know how to get to you,” she said.
Inspired by the preschool conference, Regalbuto got creative with other ways to teach Rocco about how to handle emergency situations.
Before he could even read, the New Jersey mom uploaded photos to each family contact on her iPhone’s favorites list so Rocco could easily identify who to call in case of an emergency. Later, she helped her son memorize important family phone numbers by changing the passwords of Rocco’s electronic devices to those emergency contact numbers.
“It’s fairly simple to do, but you never think about it until someone else tells you to do it,” Regalbuto said.
She is pleased her hard work paid off.
“After hearing the 911 tapes, I was sobbing, because I can hear myself in the background in distress and I can hear Rocco being calm,” she said. “It’s really heartwarming to know that everything I’ve taught him has resonated, and he knew what to do right away. Rocco is a very empathetic and confident little boy.”
