SARASOTA - A new study is drawing attention to a danger on the playground: parents and slides.  Parents may think it's safer to put their young children on their lap and go down; but it could actually be putting their children more at risk.

14-month-old Alexander loves the slide.  His mother usually goes down with him.  "He's kinda small, so I don't want set him up by himself and fall back, so I ride with him," says his mother, Mary Cetan.

But a new study just published in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopedics shows. that when parents go down the slide with their children on their lap, the children risk breaking a leg.

It's an injury Sarasota orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Sugar sees frequently.  "Their foot gets caught against the side of the slide, their leg gets twisted, and now with the momentum of the heavier parent behind them there is even more force; so maybe if they were by themselves the force may not break it, but when you add a 100 or 200 pound parent behind them, that's enough to break the bone."

And this a problem ABC 7 anchor Monica Yadav knows about personally.  Earlier this year, her 2-year-old daughter Claire were at the playground, she put her on her lap to go down slide and her leg got caught.  Claire broke her right tibia right below the knee.

After about 6 weeks in a bright pink leg cast, Claire is fine and now completely healed.

Dr. Sugar recommends that children always go down the slide by themselves, feet first, and legs straight -- not bent.  "It's the rubber of their shoe that I find gets caught on the slide...they keep going, the foot is stuck and they twist."

There are other dangers on the playground, too.  Dr. Sugar says most of the injuries he sees are broken wrists and arms from the monkey bars.

Another problem are trampolines.  The doctor says all the of injuries he sees involving trampolines happen when there was more than one child on the trampoline.