Keeping kids safe is top on the minds of most parents, but sometimes hazards are just not that obvious. Introducing foods to infants and toddlers can be great fun, but it also brings opportunities for danger. A little knowledge about how to avoid choking can go a long way in avoiding serious emergencies. I wrote in a previous post about using pixie stix to get kids to take their medicine. I am going...
A friend once told me with great disdain, while watching me wiggle a cotton swab deep in my ear canal with great satisfaction, “I never use Q-tips to clean out my ears.” Apparently a doctor once told him never to put anything smaller than his elbow into his ear, and he took these words as gospel. Do you ever have the feeling when someone tells you some great truth, a law of the universe that you’ve...
I am always skeptical of easy fixes. If a diet or a product or a book claims that they will have astounding results with little pain, my first instinct is to run in the other direction. However, a study that will be published in March in the journal Pediatrics looks at risk factors for obesity and has three simple bits of advice that I think are worth following. Eat with your family. Decrease TV time. Get...
Coughing children are a big problem…especially during the holidays. They can’t sleep. They keep their already sleep-deprived parents awake. They sound dreadful. They cough so hard they barf (ick). Every parent, at some time, comes to me desperately seeking a cure for their child’s cough. The children are usually desperate too, though after his mom told me that he had coughed for a month,...
What do you do when you hear “global pandemic?” Is it time to build a bunker? Should you and your family lock yourself in with enough PB&J for weeks of sustenance? The novel H1N1 virus commonly known in the US as swine flu has officially been deemed a global pandemic. Somehow, though, the initial flutter seems to have died down. Parents now alternate between worrying about how to protect...
