Toddler Health & Safety Related Articles & Blog Posts

One month after eating an earthworm on a dare, a 16-year-old girl developed a fever and nausea that lasted about 2 or 3 days, along with some mild swelling around her eyes. These symptoms went away, but over the next two weeks she also had a worsening cough and lost 5 pounds. The diagnosis?

More than 10 percent of American kids between the ages of 2 and 5 are already overweight or obese, according to the January 2005 annual statistics report of the American Heart Association. This number comes from an analysis of children measured in 2002, and is the latest data available. It’s almost half-again as many as [...]

Is it dangerous for kids to sleep with the lights on? Lots of interesting news has been coming out of the 2004 Children with Leukemia conference in London. We’re making great progress in leukemia, but also falling behind. Even though cure rates are climbing, more children are getting leukemia than ever before – especially in [...]

We know that the first months of life are a very impressionable time when it comes to the developing immune system. Even brief breastfeeding in the first few months of life, for instance, may give long-term protection from asthma. On the flip side, exposure to some foods in the first months may predispose to later [...]

When young children refuse to poop on the potty, they have often fallen in to what I call the D-D-D cycle, for Discomfort > Dread > Delay. They might enter the cycle from any point, perhaps from waiting to poop because they don’t want to interrupt playing, or perhaps from fear of the potty itself. [...]

The AAP’s Caring for Your Baby and Young Child suggests yogurt as a healthy food for babies and toddlers as early as 8 months old. Most young babies begin life nutritionally sound with breast milk or an approved formula. Most make a smooth transition to healthy first cereals, fruits, and veggies. But during the transition [...]

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere – and hot, really hot, in many areas.  We are warm-blooded. Our bodies produce heat. When a muscle contracts, only about 25 percent of the energy is used for the muscle work. A surprising 75 percent of the energy is turned into heat to keep our temperature up. If [...]

Each year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) makes recommendations about who should get the influenza vaccine. The focus of the flu shot campaign among healthy people has been on people aged 65 and older, because they have been considered to be at the highest risk for flu-related complications and hospitalization. However, it turns [...]

I’ve been in earthquakes, firestorms, and hurricanes. I’ve been in a storm cellar when a tornado passed outside. All of these natural disasters are powerful dramas, taking and changing lives where they appear. But in the United States, heat waves kill more people each year than all other natural disasters combined!

Your toddler has swallowed some berries from a plant in the park. Are they safe? What should you do? Poisoning is one of the leading causes of unintentional injuries in children.