Is the advice from your child’s doctor falling on deaf ears?
Sure you disagree with your pediatrician sometimes, but mostly you’re on the same page — at least in the doctor’s office. You don’t take your child’s health lightly. What parent does? Still, just as adults may be loath to follow their own physicians’ advice from time to time, parents — frustratingly for pediatricians who see their children — frequently do the same. Experts say the reasons — like difficulty implementing recommendations at home — vary, as do the consequences: from exposure to certain health issues that might not seem so dire to potentially putting a child’s life at risk.
Neglecting the ABCs of safe sleep for infants
“The baby should be alone — the A; B — on their back; and C — in a crib,” says Dr. Joseph Gigante, a professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Understanding how exhausted parents are, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends infants share their parents’ bedroom for at least the first six months, but don’t bed-share — sleeping on a separate surface, such as a crib or bassinet. “We see babies here at our hospital every month that die from suffocation from unsafe sleep” — where parents roll over on a child sleeping with them in their bed, says Dr. Jamie Kondis, a pediatrician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Kids go unvaccinated.
While there’s strong scientific and clinical consensus supporting routinely vaccinating children, some parents still resist doing so. And although there are instances — like when a child is allergic to a vaccine — where it may be advised against, pediatricians aren’t in the habit of suggesting kids forgo vaccination as a matter of course. “Probably the main vaccine-preventable disease that we see with infants [in] our intensive care unit, and dying as well from is pertussis, or whooping cough,” says Gigante, a pediatrician at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville. He notes there have also been outbreaks of measles and mumps — which are also vaccine-preventable — in some places around the country.
Letting kids bike without a helmet
More than 2.2 million children ages 5 to 17 — or an average of over 600 kids a day — were treated in U.S. emergency rooms for bicycle-related injuries from 2006 to 2015, according to new research published online in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention. In most cases where kids sustain a head injury in a bike accident “it’s because they’re not wearing a helmet,” says Kondis, who is an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. That’s something doctors routinely counsel parents to make sure their kids do. And it’s not just talk; many hospitals and medical organizations offer help fitting kids with bike helmets, and some also give away helmets for free.
Not eating well — and drinking liquid sugar
Talk in pediatricians’ offices commonly turns to kids eating ample fruits and veggies, avoiding just grazing on salty or sweet snacks, and laying off sugary beverages linked with higher rates of obesity, including fruit juice. “I talk until I am blue in the face about how terrible juice is for you, and there’s still something in parents’ minds that says that juice is good,” says Dr. Nick DeBlasio, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Where doctors used to be more permissive in suggesting juice consumption, the AAP now recommends no juice for babies under 1 and limiting it to, at most, 4 to 8 ounces a day depending on a child’s age.
Medications aren’t properly secured and stored out of sight.
If you have kids, it’s not enough to keep a lid on your medications and leave them out on the counter. Due to the risk of kids accessing their parents’ drugs (from toddlers happening upon them to teens looking for opioids) medication safety is another significant discussion in pediatricians’ offices. “Little kids can open more medications than parents realize,” Kondis says. “We see a lot of ingestions from that.” Child-resistant tops aren’t always enough to keep kids out, and parents are advised to put prescription and over-the-counter drugs away in a locked medicine cabinet to avoid accidental poisoning or overdose.
Guns aren’t properly secured and stored out of sight.
While the debate over gun control rages, the human cost of accidents and gun suicides is widely recognized. As a result, doctors now routinely advise on gun safety. That includes keeping firearms in a safe, and using a gun lock, so they can’t be accessed and fired by a child. “We always tell parents [to] put locks on their guns. But a lot of them still don’t do that,” Kondis says. “It’s such a deadly thing, and we’ve seen a lot of accidental gun injuries. So our ER, and I know a lot of our [doctors’] offices in town, they’ll offer free locks to families if they have guns in the home. But they still have to use them.”
Seasonal health and safety advice goes out the window.
Do you mow your lawn while your kids are playing in it? (Don’t.) Do your kids wear life jackets if you’re boating? (They should!) Do you consistently apply sunscreen when your kids go out to play in the sun? “We see a lot of kids that come in with sunburns,” says DeBlasio, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati. Often parents don’t think to apply sunscreen if kids are playing outside but not swimming. “Any kid six months and above should have sunscreen,” DeBlasio says. Younger babies should generally be kept out of the sun and wear protective clothing — like hats, and light clothing that covers their skin – when in the sun.
Lobbying for medication — when less (or none) is better
During cold and flu season, parents understandably want to help miserable children get better fast. But that doesn’t mean cough and cold medicine is any more likely to do that. Contrarily, medication doesn’t cure the common cold, pediatricians emphasize. And giving an antibiotic that treats bacterial infections for a virus won’t help. Instead kids are just exposed to medication risks, and more bugs build up antibiotic resistance. “I think oftentimes it’s easier for the provider to kind of just cave in and either write a prescription for an antibiotic inappropriately or offer them over-the-counter cold and cough medicines,” Gigante says. “Neither one of them will really work.” Focus instead on comfort care, like drinking fluids and Tylenol for pain.
Car seat safety takes a back seat.
Routinely before newborns leave the hospital, staff help parents ensure car seats are properly installed. Many hospitals will do this for parents and — along with organizations like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — provide guidance on car seat safety. It’s also something pediatricians talk with parents about. For example, kids need to be in a rear-facing car seat until at least age 2, Kondis notes. Besides not rushing the switch to a forward-facing seat, parents should also consult with their child’s doctor about booster seats and other car seat safety questions, if uncertain.
Letting screen time get out of hand
Today, children, like many of their parents, are glued to screens. This can cause kids to have sleep problems when they’re spending lots of time staring at the blue light in their rooms. “I advise families: No. 1, they should never have a tablet, phone or TV in their bedroom,” DeBlasio says. Families are urged to be mindful of screen time throughout the day — something doctors are now spending more time talking to parents about. So look up from your smartphone (stop “phubbing” your kids, and don’t allow them to snub you in favor of technology either), and experts advise, customize an approach to manage screen time in your home.
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10 Things Pediatricians Advise That Parents Ignore — and Really Shouldn’t originally appeared on usnews.com
