Targeted warnings

 

I was probably about 9 or 10 and I am assuming it was early winter when my mother took me aside and said in her usual quiet tone, “Willy, don’t ever stick your tongue on a metal pipe when it is cold outside.”

This was a very unusual encounter to say the least. My folks used a hands-off approach to parenting. My sister and I were not terribly adventurous and we were allowed to experience the consequences of our own foolishness with very few “I-told-you-so’s.” Exactly what prompted this outburst of unnecessary caution from my mother is unclear. It was 3 decades before the release of “A Christmas Story,” a classic Jean Shepherd movie portraying in painful clarity the consequences of a curious tongue and a frosty pipe.

Putting my tongue on a frozen pipe was something that had never occurred to me even in my wildest preadolescent dreams. My mother’s caution only served to pique my interest and provide me with one more tempting scenario to consider.

Recently, a prank has gone viral on TikTok that shows an adult, usually the parent, cracking (not smashing) an egg on the child’s head and then emptying the egg contents into a bowl. Unlike the tongue-pipe disaster, it is hard to imagine how this stunt can be dangerous as long as the child is old enough to be walking around. But, at least one pediatrician has warned that there is a risk to the child from contracting salmonella.

There may be a few young children who are frightened by having an egg cracked on their head, but I can’t imagine that it would leave any lasting emotional scars. Given the minuscule theoretical risk of infection and the fact that the videos have accumulated more than 670 million views, this is another example of when we “experts” should keep a low profile and let the virus fade into Internet oblivion.

There is, however, a difference between harmless foolishness and stupidity, and one wonders when and in what manner we pediatricians should become involved. For example, in a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, the investigators searched through a national emergency department database and found that in a 9-year period, there were more than 2,000 visits related to head injuries caused by ceiling fans.

There were two peaks of distribution, one at less than 1 year of age and another at age 4. The older children were more often injured playing on furniture, most often bunk beds. The younger children were more likely to have been injured by being lifted or tossed in the air. No deaths were reported.

Is this a phenomenon that demands a response by pediatricians? Do we have time to ask every family if they have a ceiling fan? Should we be handing out brochures to every family? To whom should we target our message? This is a situation that seems to sort easily into two categories. One that involves stupidity and a second that is ignorance that may respond to education.

Tossing young children in the air is fun for the tosser and the child. I am sure there are a few children every year who slip out of the grasp of an adult and are injured. I have never seen a child brought in with this history. But it must happen. The result is likely to trigger a very tricky child protective investigation. But tossing a child underneath a ceiling fan is just plain stupid. I’m not sure our intervention is going to prevent it from happening. Bunk beds and ceiling fans are a different story. Posters in our offices and warnings and labels at the point of purchase of both fans and bunk beds makes some sense.

And while we are sticking labels on furniture, we should take a hard look at couches. Researchers have recently found that the accumulation of sedentary time in childhood can lead to early evidence of heart damage, which may portend heart disease in adulthood. Instead of those tags under the cushions, we need a big blaze orange sticker in prominent view that warns of the danger of becoming a couch potato.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

 

I was probably about 9 or 10 and I am assuming it was early winter when my mother took me aside and said in her usual quiet tone, “Willy, don’t ever stick your tongue on a metal pipe when it is cold outside.”

This was a very unusual encounter to say the least. My folks used a hands-off approach to parenting. My sister and I were not terribly adventurous and we were allowed to experience the consequences of our own foolishness with very few “I-told-you-so’s.” Exactly what prompted this outburst of unnecessary caution from my mother is unclear. It was 3 decades before the release of “A Christmas Story,” a classic Jean Shepherd movie portraying in painful clarity the consequences of a curious tongue and a frosty pipe.

Putting my tongue on a frozen pipe was something that had never occurred to me even in my wildest preadolescent dreams. My mother’s caution only served to pique my interest and provide me with one more tempting scenario to consider.

Recently, a prank has gone viral on TikTok that shows an adult, usually the parent, cracking (not smashing) an egg on the child’s head and then emptying the egg contents into a bowl. Unlike the tongue-pipe disaster, it is hard to imagine how this stunt can be dangerous as long as the child is old enough to be walking around. But, at least one pediatrician has warned that there is a risk to the child from contracting salmonella.

There may be a few young children who are frightened by having an egg cracked on their head, but I can’t imagine that it would leave any lasting emotional scars. Given the minuscule theoretical risk of infection and the fact that the videos have accumulated more than 670 million views, this is another example of when we “experts” should keep a low profile and let the virus fade into Internet oblivion.

There is, however, a difference between harmless foolishness and stupidity, and one wonders when and in what manner we pediatricians should become involved. For example, in a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, the investigators searched through a national emergency department database and found that in a 9-year period, there were more than 2,000 visits related to head injuries caused by ceiling fans.

There were two peaks of distribution, one at less than 1 year of age and another at age 4. The older children were more often injured playing on furniture, most often bunk beds. The younger children were more likely to have been injured by being lifted or tossed in the air. No deaths were reported.

Is this a phenomenon that demands a response by pediatricians? Do we have time to ask every family if they have a ceiling fan? Should we be handing out brochures to every family? To whom should we target our message? This is a situation that seems to sort easily into two categories. One that involves stupidity and a second that is ignorance that may respond to education.

Tossing young children in the air is fun for the tosser and the child. I am sure there are a few children every year who slip out of the grasp of an adult and are injured. I have never seen a child brought in with this history. But it must happen. The result is likely to trigger a very tricky child protective investigation. But tossing a child underneath a ceiling fan is just plain stupid. I’m not sure our intervention is going to prevent it from happening. Bunk beds and ceiling fans are a different story. Posters in our offices and warnings and labels at the point of purchase of both fans and bunk beds makes some sense.

And while we are sticking labels on furniture, we should take a hard look at couches. Researchers have recently found that the accumulation of sedentary time in childhood can lead to early evidence of heart damage, which may portend heart disease in adulthood. Instead of those tags under the cushions, we need a big blaze orange sticker in prominent view that warns of the danger of becoming a couch potato.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.

 

I was probably about 9 or 10 and I am assuming it was early winter when my mother took me aside and said in her usual quiet tone, “Willy, don’t ever stick your tongue on a metal pipe when it is cold outside.”

This was a very unusual encounter to say the least. My folks used a hands-off approach to parenting. My sister and I were not terribly adventurous and we were allowed to experience the consequences of our own foolishness with very few “I-told-you-so’s.” Exactly what prompted this outburst of unnecessary caution from my mother is unclear. It was 3 decades before the release of “A Christmas Story,” a classic Jean Shepherd movie portraying in painful clarity the consequences of a curious tongue and a frosty pipe.

Putting my tongue on a frozen pipe was something that had never occurred to me even in my wildest preadolescent dreams. My mother’s caution only served to pique my interest and provide me with one more tempting scenario to consider.

Recently, a prank has gone viral on TikTok that shows an adult, usually the parent, cracking (not smashing) an egg on the child’s head and then emptying the egg contents into a bowl. Unlike the tongue-pipe disaster, it is hard to imagine how this stunt can be dangerous as long as the child is old enough to be walking around. But, at least one pediatrician has warned that there is a risk to the child from contracting salmonella.

There may be a few young children who are frightened by having an egg cracked on their head, but I can’t imagine that it would leave any lasting emotional scars. Given the minuscule theoretical risk of infection and the fact that the videos have accumulated more than 670 million views, this is another example of when we “experts” should keep a low profile and let the virus fade into Internet oblivion.

There is, however, a difference between harmless foolishness and stupidity, and one wonders when and in what manner we pediatricians should become involved. For example, in a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, the investigators searched through a national emergency department database and found that in a 9-year period, there were more than 2,000 visits related to head injuries caused by ceiling fans.

There were two peaks of distribution, one at less than 1 year of age and another at age 4. The older children were more often injured playing on furniture, most often bunk beds. The younger children were more likely to have been injured by being lifted or tossed in the air. No deaths were reported.

Is this a phenomenon that demands a response by pediatricians? Do we have time to ask every family if they have a ceiling fan? Should we be handing out brochures to every family? To whom should we target our message? This is a situation that seems to sort easily into two categories. One that involves stupidity and a second that is ignorance that may respond to education.

Tossing young children in the air is fun for the tosser and the child. I am sure there are a few children every year who slip out of the grasp of an adult and are injured. I have never seen a child brought in with this history. But it must happen. The result is likely to trigger a very tricky child protective investigation. But tossing a child underneath a ceiling fan is just plain stupid. I’m not sure our intervention is going to prevent it from happening. Bunk beds and ceiling fans are a different story. Posters in our offices and warnings and labels at the point of purchase of both fans and bunk beds makes some sense.

And while we are sticking labels on furniture, we should take a hard look at couches. Researchers have recently found that the accumulation of sedentary time in childhood can lead to early evidence of heart damage, which may portend heart disease in adulthood. Instead of those tags under the cushions, we need a big blaze orange sticker in prominent view that warns of the danger of becoming a couch potato.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Other than a Littman stethoscope he accepted as a first-year medical student in 1966, Dr. Wilkoff reports having nothing to disclose. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.