When Your Child Asks if It’s Ok to Bungee Jump Off One of the Highest Bridges in the World....

What irked me most about J F Boylan’s Op-Ed in the NY Times was the statement "It's impossible for me and all those other parents, not to want to shield our young from the many accidents we know are waiting for them".

 

So I responded to the Editor:

Intriguing how Ms. Boylan intertwines themes of parental responsibility as it pertains to thrill-seeking adventures and then love, as it pertains to her gender decision. A parent’s primary responsibilities are safety and protection; love and respect are secondary. If Ms. Boylan believes that “many accidents are waiting” for her children, then for God’s sake she should do her job as a parent and instill in them an understanding of recreation and adventure that excludes bungee jumping and sky-diving. When my adult children explore the world, I know they’ll research shark-cage diving and understand the waters are “chummed” to incite sharks into a feeding frenzy. They’ll surely have the common sense to go swimming in a different risk pool.

 

 

 



How Can Over-Protective Parenting Cause an Injury?

On a playground slide….that’s how. “Orthopedic specialists say they treat a number of toddlers and young children each year with broken legs as a result of riding down the slide on a parent’s lap.” In Tara Parker-Pope’s piece on this surprising risk, she quotes Jed Dickman, whose 18 month old toddler’s sneaker got caught on the side of the slide, resulting in a fractured tibia. “My wife was just trying to keep Hannah extra safe and make sure she didn’t fall; she felt very guilty about it.”

What’s the upshot?

This may be one of those counter intuitive situations when a child is actually safer by herself. During the summer, have fun and be safe!

Children Under 5 Make Up the Bulk of Americans Treated in the ER After Swallowing Medications

Home sick today and popping medications, advil, and vitamins, gave me this chance to blog about Liz Szabo's recent piece in USA Today about child safety and medications.

According to Szabo, "Most such poisonings occur in 1- and 2-year-olds — an age group whose curiosity and climbing skills often outstrip their judgment — according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. About 90% of child poisonings happen in the home, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Thanks partly to better caps and packaging, child poisoning deaths have fallen by 80% since 1972.

And most people don't store medications properly, says Lara McKenzie of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. When people are sick with colds, they often leave cough syrups and other drugs by the sink. More and more people also now request "easy open" caps on bottles or day-of-the-week pill organizers, Casavant says. That can be especially dangerous when children get into a grandparent's open purse or begin exploring her house."

"Experts offer these tips to keep children safe:
•Properly dispose of unneeded or expired medications, advises the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
•Don't take medications in front of children, which may inspire them to try to imitate you, Casavant says. Tell children never to take medication unless you give it to them.
•Never refer to pills as candy.
•Because children can sometimes open child-resistant caps, keep medications out of sight, out of reach and in a locked container.
•Keep the national poison control center number — 800-222-1222 — on or next to all of your phones."

The Parenting Hall of Shame

Children are special treasures that are entrusted to us to protect. Particularly in the summer, I spot safety risks for children that land parents in the Hall of Shame.
Here is my monthly parenting column from the Home News Tribune.

Each summer I inevitably observe parenting behavior that appalls but not necessarily surprises me. I often say, if there were such a thing as a parenting license, these folks should have theirs revoked.

The first incident took place on my own street, when an SUV driven by an adult cruised by with his sun-roof wide open. An 8 or 9 year old boy was standing up in the sunroof, and waving to passers-by. I cringed and hoped that an Edison patrol car would soon be turning our corner and issue a summons to this driver.

The second incident took place on the West-bound train platform at Metropark. I looked across the tracks to see a little two-year-old girl running back and forth between what appeared to be her parents, standing several yards apart from each other. It appeared that she was enjoying her freedom as she ran back and forth with Amtrak Acela trains speeding by at 100 mph. Having grown up with a mother that had a “death grip” on my hand when crossing busy streets, again I cringed at this irresponsible behavior.

The third incident took place on a recent trip to Florida and although it did not involve safety, it tops my list of bad parenting behavior nonetheless. Near Boca Raton there is a water park named SKIRIXEN. The brochure states: direct from Europe to Florida comes one of America’s first cable water-ski resorts. Imagine waterskiing and wake-boarding with no boat, just an overhead cable to pull you. When the advertisement says, no boat hassles, I can personally vouch for the fact that there is no family recreational activity that is more stressful and has more yelling than renting a boat, equipment, and waterskiing.

I watched the safety video and got the explanation of rules with a group of youths who were all 1/4 my age. A young girl of about 13 years old was standing on the line in front of me, ready to go into the lake but looking hesitant and her father was standing nearby not going in himself. He was yelling at her, “You better go in after all the driving I did to get you here.” Her red face revealed not only embarrassment at her father’s tirade but the fear of a child who clearly did not want to do this activity.

After a lifetime of waterskiing experience, even I was feeling a bit uneasy, since this cable system involves being yanked onto the lake at 18 miles an hour, as opposed to a boat’s pull which gradually increases. It was reasonable for her to be nervous. Incidentally, safety rule #1 at SKIRIXEN: if you fall, look behind you fast to make sure the next skier sees you and avoids running you over.

The father then berated his fear-stricken teen-ager, “I paid $25 damn bucks (expletive toned down by author) for you to try this sport so you better get the hell out there and do it right now!” Although I was disgusted, I have been told on more than one occasion to mind my own business, so I write about incidents in my column rather than confront the guilty party face-to-face. Here are the four violations I would give this dad if I could suspend his parenting license:

#1 – Use of foul language in the presence of a minor
#2 – Speaking in a demeaning and angry tone in public
#3 – Forcing a child to do something she fears
#4 – Making $25 more valuable than his child’s emotional well-being

If I would have spoken to this man, I would have suggested that he forfeit the $25 and thereby gain his child’s respect and trust. He would have then topped the list of his daughter’s role models, rather than the Parenting Hall of Shame.

Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com

We Interrupt this Parenting Blog for a Rant

Not that this has anything to do with parenting, but I must rant about my pet peeve: people who stop at the top/bottom of a staircase or escalator and people who come to a complete halt in a doorway. Folks, these are passageways so please keep moving. I normally start singing (aloud) Bob Dylan’s lyrics, “Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.”

Pamela Lewis ranted about this recently in a NY Times article titled, “Don’t you know you’re in the way?” But the focus of her rant was about people on cell-phones. Not me, I am ranting about people who choose the top/bottom of the stairs or a doorway to get bewildered in. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: That is a very dangerous place to be bewildered, so please step aside. Granted that in the spacious farmland of the Midwest, this is not an issue. But, most people in the United States live and work in cities.

Just be courteous to others and be alert to their safety as well as your own. Now that I think of it…that is a rather important message for parents to convey to their children so I’m glad I blogged about it here.

Safety is Foremost and Don’t Use the Word Accident

This is the third in a series of 3 posts on Child Safety

Post 1: Better Safe than Stupid...click here
Post 2: Dr. Singer, Practice what you Preach...click here

A recent report by the Center for Disease Control concerning childhood injury provides some very useful information. In a Washington Post article, titled “How Kids Get Hurt” author David Brown states, “Around the world, fatal injuries in children total 830,000 a year, a number equal to roughly all the children in Chicago. That’s 2270 a day, of which at least 1000 could have been prevented, experts say.”

Brown interviewed Julie Gilchrist, a physician and epidemiologist at CDC, and one of the authors of the report. Brown explains, “You won’t hear Gilchrist or her colleagues use the word accidents. That word, they say, implies that the events could not have been avoided and the damage could not have been prevented—exactly the opposite message they want to convey.”

STATS from David Brown:
**Childhood injuries cause the nation about $300 billion a year.
**In motor vehicle deaths, the risk that comes with age reflects numerous behaviors and vulnerabilities. As soon as a child is able to exert willpower, risk goes up. Of children four and younger who are killed, 30% are unrestrained. Of teenagers killed, more than half are not wearing seatbelts.

STATS from the CDC Childhood Injury Report:
INJURY DEATHS
**On average 12,175 children…zero to 19 years of age die each year in the United States from an unintentional injury.
**Males have higher injury death rates than females.
**Injuries due to transportation are the leading cause of death for children.

The leading causes of injury death differ by age group:
**For children less than one year of age, two thirds of injury deaths are due to suffocation.
**Drowning is the leading cause of injury death for those one to four years of age.
**For children five to nineteen years of age, the most injury deaths are due to being an occupant in a motor vehicle traffic crash.

NON-FATAL INJURIES
**An estimated 9.2 million children annually have an initial emergency department visit for an unintentional injury.
**Males generally have higher non-fatal injury rates than females.
**Injuries due to falls are the leading cause of non-fatal injury: each year, approximately 2.8 million children have an initial emergency department visit for injuries from a fall. For children less than one year of age, falls account for over 50% of non-fatal injuries.

Better Safe Than Stupid

Here is my monthly Home News Tribune column that was published on October 29, 2009. Doesn't it just burn you up to see a parent acting ridiculously irresponsible?

A parent must assume full responsibility for their child's well-being at all times, from infancy to when the child starts school, and then some. That's why something that I saw recently left an indelible impression on me.

One fall afternoon, I passed by a house in my neighborhood and observed that a man in his thirties was mowing his front lawn. Nothing shocking so far, but then I noticed a child, perhaps one year old or less, in an infant snuggly on his back.I stopped my car and stared in amazement because I thought I was hallucinating. This man was pushing a noisy power mower (with no bag to catch the cuttings) and his infant is strapped to his back for the ride.

Confirming my initial observations, I drove away wondering what this man could be thinking. I tried to put myself in his shoes so as not to be too judgmental. Maybe he is a single father who is adversely affected by this recession and can't afford a baby-sitter for one hour (feeble reason). Maybe he loves his baby, works long hours, perhaps on the night shift, and longs for this precious bonding time (ridiculous reason). Maybe he thinks his baby enjoys the ride on Daddy's back and experiencing the great outdoors simultaneously (absurd reason).

Aside from the danger of dropping the baby or the baby falling out of the infant carrier is the bizarre assumption that this baby might be enjoying him/herself while inhaling dust and fiber from the grass cuttings and being assaulted by the deafening sound of a rattling mower engine. And what a magnificent view of Dad's sweaty neck.I controlled myself from stopping the car and telling this man what I thought of his parenting skills. I want to assume that this man cares about his precious charge but just didn't consider how enjoyable this might be for his child.

More inexcusable is that he did not recognize this as a dangerous situation.
Tragically, injury is the largest cause of child death in all developed nations, accounting for nearly 40 percent of deaths in the ages one to 14. These statistics are compiled in UNICEF's Innocenti Report Card.The report further states, "Taken together, traffic accidents, intentional injuries, drownings, falls, fires, poisonings, and other accidents kill more than 20,000 children every year in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) nations."

Traffic accidents form the largest category of causes of child injury and death. Interestingly, boys are 70 percent more likely to die by injury than girls. In every situation, parents should first determine if the circumstances are completely safe and then look at it from their child's perspective asking, "Are we having fun yet?"

Endnote: Not that you asked, but here's my (somewhat paranoid) list of recreational activities that are prohibited for each of my children due to safety concerns from yours truly:
• Motorcycles and convertibles (on the Turnpike versus 18-wheelers?);
• Hot air ballooning (just take pictures of them);
• Parasailing (200 feet high and your life depends on a rope?);
• Spear fishing and underwater shark encounter (can you tell I was raised in Miami?);
• Extracting cobra venom (Google "Bill Haast Serpentarium");
• Hang-gliding and skydiving (no explanation needed);
• Bungee jumping (not even worth discussing).
I think we've had a good deal of family fun over the years, despite the lack of participation in the aforementioned list of activities.

And wherever my children go, I always caution them: Have safe, be fun!

Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Please comment on this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com

Supersized Family Big on Parental Love, Sibling Support by Dr. Alan Singer

When you see a family with a huge number of children, is your first thought....how can they possibly manage? In this column, I discuss several large family stereotypes, but more importantly the conluence of sibling support. The Home News Tribune published this on May 28, 2008

In order to give you a complete picture of life in a large family, I first asked Rabbi Norman Weitzner and wife Naomi how many children they have. His response: More than 10. Her response: Not enough.

When asked why they won't give me the exact count, Norman responded, "It hurts childless couples to describe the size of a big family so I don't want to." Naomi's approach: "When you quantify the size of a group of children, you don't differentiate individuals and you should, because each one is a separate person."

Back in the 1970s, when they lived in Boulder, Colo., where Norman directed the University of Colorado Hillel, a reporter with an anti-large family bias asked their 7-year-old son, "Don't you feel bad you have so little time with Mom and Dad because there are so many kids at home?" Their son responded, "Oh no, just the opposite. When one parent is busy, there's always someone else to play with." As a large family in the heyday of the Zero Population Growth movement, they used to get plenty of dirty looks. Naomi recalled overhearing a woman say to her friend, "What can we do, they are using up all our oxygen."

Even though I have no anti-large family bias, I still felt the need (not sure why) to question them on large family stereotypes. One by one, they shot each down. When I asked about safety, Naomi described the "buddy system" rule for bicycle riding. "They could never ride without a sibling, and once it really paid off because my son fell off his bicycle and was badly hurt. His brother flagged down a car and sent them to our home urgently." Naomi insisted, "Our children know that we are not out for No. 1 all the time; we're also out for No. 2, or No. 3, which is how we raised them." The rabbi added, "Kids in a large family know that they have to share with other people; they are not as self-centered."

When I asked how they survived what had to be a three-ring circus at times, they explained the importance of being well organized. Each child had a job to do, and jobs were rotated monthly.
Was there time for recreation? "Sure," Naomi responded, "if they wanted a day trip on Sunday, I'd point out their unfinished household chores and give them a time deadline. Things happened — zoom!"

I inquired about the amount of time they gave each child, based on dividing up the parental hours per day. Naomi took umbrage at my question: "Tell me, Dr. Singer, today's latchkey kids, who come home to an empty house or to the maid, are they all from large families? The amount of time a parent has is not related to the number of children. I don't subscribe to the thinking that if you have six kids, each child gets one-sixth of your love. You can read a story to three children and you can take three kids on an adventure hike. A child does not feel less loved because his siblings come along on a trip."

The last stereotype we discussed was the resentment of older siblings who are placed in a caretaker role. The rabbi explained, "Someone asked if our firstborn daughter, who was followed by many sons, resented being the oldest. I suggested to him that we wait and see what my daughter decides for her own family size when she gets married. Well, she has many children of her own, so the proof is in the pudding."

Enough about stereotypes; let me describe some fascinating sibling insights. The Weitzners are quite proud of how well their children look after each other. Four of their married sons and their families live within one block of each other in Brooklyn, N.Y. "It is not to be believed how much they help each other," Naomi says. "When one of them moves to a new house, they all get together, pack the furniture, and load the moving van, even if it means lowering a couch from a second-floor balcony." "My son, who is in home construction, will go to his siblings and retile their kitchen floor at no charge," says Norman. "My son the lawyer did all their house closings for free." "One of our sons often says to his siblings, "If you ever need money, just let me know." Naomi adds. "Can you imagine?"

Certainly, credit for the success of this large family belongs squarely in the hands of Norman and Naomi. Dr. Richard Weinberg, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, stated in Child Magazine (September 2000), "Indeed, parents — not family size — have the ultimate power to shape their children's lives. If parents are patient and caring and want to invest in their kids, they can have lots of well-adjusted children." "And," add the Weitzners, "plenty of prayers and tears directed toward the Creator, who is the third partner of every set of parents."

"Be Counted" columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column at Dr. Singer's blog http://www.familythinking.com/ or e-mail DrAlanSinger@aol.com. "Be Counted" columnists are members of the public.

Lessons for Kids in Mistakes of Our Repentant Governor by Dr. Alan Singer

Governor Jon Corzine's near fatal accident prompted me to put together this piece on Safety for families which the Home News Tribune published on 5/16/07

Upon his release from the hospital, Gov. Jon S. Corzine remarked, "I set a very poor example for a lot of young people — a lot of people in general." He added, "I hope the state will forgive me, and I'll work very hard to set the right kind of example."

His poor example is known to all: speeding at 91 mph on the Garden State Parkway, which endangered others, and not wearing a seat belt, which nearly cost him his life in the ensuing crash. The good that should emerge from this near-tragedy is that individuals and families will be more safety-conscious in the upcoming summer months.

According to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), 18 percent of students in ninth through 12th grades "rarely or never wear seat belts" when riding in a car driven by someone else. Not only must parents set a good example by buckling up, they must use the proper car seat for a child, starting from a baby's first ride home from the hospital. Inappropriately restrained children are 3.5 times more likely to suffer a severe injury in a crash. And what is the excuse that parents usually give for not using a child safety seat? Because "their child does not like it." Unforgivable!

Equally unforgivable is leaving a child unattended in a car. One in five parents rarely or never lock their cars at home. In 2003, 36 children died in hot cars. Additionally, if a child is left alone in a car with the keys, he can start the car, slip the car into gear, and cause considerable damage to himself and others. Recommendation: Lock your car at all times and never leave a child in a car unattended, even for two minutes.

Here's some more safety advice:
Bicycles: Properly fitted helmets are 85 percent effective in reducing head injuries. This pertains to skates, scooters and skateboards as well. Isn't it a disturbing coincidence that 86 percent of students (grades 9-12) rarely or never wear bicycle helmets? (YRBS)
Sports: According to the U.S. Eye Injury Registry, 38 percent of all sports-related eye injuries result from baseball or softball. These sports are the main cause of facial injuries and eye injuries that can result in loss of vision. For $10, players can be equipped with a polycarbonate face guard on their batting helmets.

Pools: An adult must be within arm's length of a small child in a pool. And the adult must pay attention to the child. A small child can quickly drown in a kiddie pool, where the water is not even over the child's head. Swimming pool fences with self-latching gates are imperative for preventing pool drowning.

Sunburn: Millions of Americans get tans to improve their appearance, even though exposure to ultraviolet radiation is the most common cause of skin cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that 60,000 adults in the United States will be diagnosed with melanoma; approximately 7,700 will die from it this year. Pediatric melanoma is rapidly increasing as well. Parents must set a good example by using sunscreen (even on cloudy days), wearing sun-resistant clothing/hat, avoiding the sun from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and never getting sunburn.

Last, is a topic that is dear to our hearts (and stomachs) — obesity. It is common knowledge that obesity rates in the United States have skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Children who tend to be sedentary, will burn less calories. Who bothers to go outside and play when 38 percent of ninth- through 12-graders watch three or more hours of TV on a school day (YRBS)? And what's on TV? Frequent advertisements for junk food and supersized portions.
Physical Activity is imperative for addressing the obesity epidemic. While 44 percent of students are trying to lose weight, a mere 28 percent of students attend physical education class daily (YRBS). And parents should make every effort to have dinner with their children each night. It is one of the best ways to set a good example for eating properly and to have quality conversation time, provided the television stays off.

One last point regarding Governor Corzine as a role model: Apologizing for mistakes that affect others does "set the right kind of example."

"Be Counted" columnist Dr. Alan M. Singer blogs at http://www.familythinking.com/. He is a marriage therapist in Highland Park and can be reached at DrAlanSinger@aol.com