Today I welcome Holly Choi. She is a mother, CPR/first aid instructor, child burn educator, and child passenger safety technician to speak about 10 things she wishes every parents would know about child safety.

How can we prevent burns in the home?
What are the biggest safety tips around the home?
What are the most common injuries we see as a Pediatrician and safety educator?
How do we make sure toys are not choking hazards?
What is one thing we want every family to feel comfortable knowing how to do?

00;00;11;16 – 00;00;31;12

Dr. Mona

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where I welcome Holly Choi, who is an infant and toddler safety educator, a mother and the founder of Instagram. Famous safe Beginnings, one of my favorite pages for toddler and infant safety. And she’s here with me today to talk about ten things she would want to remind parents regarding their child safety.

 

00;00;31;18 – 00;00;33;12

Dr. Mona

Thank you, Holly, for joining me.

 

00;00;33;15 – 00;00;35;11

Holly Choi

Thank you so much for having me.

 

00;00;35;13 – 00;00;49;19

Dr. Mona

So I discovered your Instagram about a few months ago and I was like, okay, 2021, I have to have Holly on my podcast because you are just such a wealth of information regarding child safety. Why did you start these beginnings?

 

00;00;49;21 – 00;01;14;10

Holly Choi

Well, to be honest, safety has been in my family for a long time. My dad worked in health and safety. My sister was a lifeguard when she was a teenager. And when I had my first daughter, I realized that my existing education and career in medical software wasn’t really conducive to being a mother. So I thought about what I loved about my work and what I didn’t love, and I landed on.

 

00;01;14;10 – 00;01;40;04

Holly Choi

I really wanted to empower people. And, specifically, I loved training adults, and I ended up becoming a first aid instructor with my sister. And we, very quickly grew our business, and I was able to leave my job and do this full time. And since then, I feel like it’s a black hole I’ve just never been able to get out of because I became so passionate about it so quickly.

 

00;01;40;06 – 00;01;50;20

Dr. Mona

That’s great, and I love that you have experience in so many different safety things. Obviously, first aid, child passenger safety. Right. In terms of obviously car seat education as well.

 

00;01;50;23 – 00;02;14;12

Holly Choi

Yes. Yeah. So I’ve been a first aid instructor for now, over five years as well as a child passenger safety technician instructor. So I certify new car seat tax as we often are referred to colloquially. And I also, lots of additional safety training in terms of childhood burn prevention and all sorts of little niche things that come up here and there.

 

00;02;14;12 – 00;02;26;05

Holly Choi

Recently, I became a member of the International Association for Child Safety, which also runs child proofing experts.com. So lots of things around the world of injury prevention for children.

 

00;02;26;08 – 00;02;43;23

Dr. Mona

And for any of you who are not following Holly on her Instagram account, Safe Beginnings, I’m going to be attaching that to my show notes page, but you’ll basically find in her highlights as well as her feed. Just basic information that you may not have thought of as a parent. Little things that we can do in our day or with our children that can keep them safe.

 

00;02;43;28 – 00;03;02;20

Dr. Mona

So I find sometimes parents are like, oh, doctor Mona, you’re such a buzzkill to always talk about safety, and you can’t do this and can’t do that. But I think it’s so important that, you know, we use Instagram as a platform to spread safety, education and the best way we can do things and obviously still have fun in our lives, but just keep it safe.

 

00;03;02;22 – 00;03;25;13

Holly Choi

Absolutely. Yeah, I get that too. I’m often referred to as a buzzkill, but, what I like to remind parents of is that it’s just important that we’re informed. It doesn’t mean that you have to follow all the rules all the time, but as long as we know what is a risk and what is actually a true hazard, whereas a risk is something where you might still have benefit.

 

00;03;25;13 – 00;03;47;12

Holly Choi

So, for example, if we let children play on playground equipment and climb, maybe they’ll fall, but they’ll also learn about gravity versus if I let a child play with broken glass, I mean, for a strong example, there’s nothing to be gained from that, right? So if we can make the distinction between what is a risk and be prepared for it and what is actually just a hazard that we should avoid.

 

00;03;47;14 – 00;03;56;13

Holly Choi

I find that that really helps parents clarify when they’re maybe feeling like they’re going a little bit overboard on something, or if something’s absolutely justified.

 

00;03;56;15 – 00;04;11;24

Dr. Mona

And you said it perfectly that it’s about just being informed, right? Because I have so many parents who don’t know a lot of this stuff, and then they feel guilty, or maybe they didn’t know it, and then they just made a mistake one time. And I don’t want any parent listening to ever feel guilted or why didn’t you do that?

 

00;04;11;26 – 00;04;33;22

Dr. Mona

You know, all of us have had experience where our children may have had injuries or accidents. And this is just, again, learning for the future and just being informed, like Holly said. So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh man, I didn’t do that. I, you know, I should have done it. This is how we learn and this is how we say, okay, this is something that sounds important to my family, and this is what I’m going to do to change this, to provide safety for my child.

 

00;04;33;24 – 00;04;35;03

Holly Choi

Absolutely.

 

00;04;35;05 – 00;04;58;12

Dr. Mona

So Holly sent me ten things that she would want a parent to know regarding their child safety. So these ten things have to do with maybe some actions or items that you may not have thought of as a parent, or maybe just some things that she commonly sees as safety concern. So the first one we’re going to talk about is preventing burned by drinking hot drinks out of a travel mug.

 

00;04;58;14 – 00;05;37;18

Holly Choi

Yeah. So this is a big one. I’m trained through our local firefighter burn fund education center as a childhood burn educator. And one of the things that was just put forward as one of the easiest ways to prevent a burn for a baby or toddler is drinking out of a travel mug or another sealed container. And the idea is that one of the leading causes of burns for babies and toddlers is just pulling, either pulling a hot mug of coffee or tea off the coffee table onto themselves, or if we’re wearing them in a carrier or wrap, or even sometimes we’ve just got them on our chest, on the couch, and we accidentally spill

 

00;05;37;18 – 00;05;58;23

Holly Choi

a drink on them. It’s so easy to prevent that. And I think we know as moms that you rarely get to drink your drink hot anyway, right? So by putting it in a travel mug, we’re solving two problems. One is that it has a lid on it, so if it gets knocked over, ideally it’s not spilling. And two is our drink will stay hot a little bit longer.

 

00;05;58;25 – 00;06;20;21

Holly Choi

But I like to put out there. If you’re going to get a travel mug, try to find one with an auto seal mechanism. So I, I particularly enjoy ones where you have a button you have to press to be able to drink out of it. And those ones, tend to be the most effective because if they are dropped or knocked over, as long as the button is not pressed, they wouldn’t spill open.

 

00;06;20;21 – 00;06;23;13

Holly Choi

And that’s really what we’re trying to prevent.

 

00;06;23;16 – 00;06;35;16

Dr. Mona

That’s a great tip. We have another. The next one also has to do with Burns. And then after that I want to talk about Burns in general. But the next one you had was number nine using your elbow to check the baths for temperature.

 

00;06;35;19 – 00;06;55;24

Holly Choi

Yes. So a really common sort of thing that parents fall into. And I think this just happens when you go to a baby store and you’re pregnant, you’re just overwhelmed with what’s on the shelf. And a lot of us will buy a bath thermometer for our babies. And typically those will look like a whale or a duck or a turtle.

 

00;06;56;12 – 00;07;15;28

Holly Choi

And they’re they totally work the catch with it. And the reason that as burn educators, we don’t recommend them as the only way to test a bath is that they do look like bath toys. And if children can grab them off the edge of a bath tub and play with them, we can’t expect it to see calibrated if it’s mistreated.

 

00;07;16;00 – 00;07;42;13

Holly Choi

So the recommendation is to at least at a minimum, if not just to use it, to use your elbow to test for bath temperature. And that’s because the skin on the elbow is much thinner, than other parts of the body, and it mimics a baby’s external skin sensitivity. So as long as you have first take your hand, swirl all the water in the tub really well so that it’s all one temperature.

 

00;07;42;15 – 00;08;02;13

Holly Choi

Then you dip your bare elbow in the tub and if it feels hot on your elbow, so you get that almost stinging sensation, then it is too hot for a baby. I also like to just throw out there that if you go on vacation, you can’t forget your elbow at home, so it’s great. It’s good to always just have a backup and it’s really, really effective.

 

00;08;02;14 – 00;08;09;22

Holly Choi

And, I suggest parents, if you haven’t tried it before, try it because you would be shocked how sensitive your elbow is. My question about.

 

00;08;09;22 – 00;08;20;24

Dr. Mona

Burns was, besides hot liquids and bathwater, what other causes that you have seen as a burn educator? For burns in children.

 

00;08;20;27 – 00;08;42;23

Holly Choi

A really big one is pulling appliances off of countertops. I have a friend who received extensive burns as a young child because he pulled a rice cooker onto himself. And what I like to remind parents of is that we have to remember to think about the world like a toddler when we’re moving about our day to day life, which is really challenging to do.

 

00;08;42;25 – 00;09;04;08

Holly Choi

But what happened in his case was his mom had a kitchen island and she had plugs below counter height, which a lot of us do, especially if you’re in a newer construction. These these kitchen islands are so common now. And, she had plugged the rice cooker into the island, and to him it looked almost like a balloon string.

 

00;09;04;08 – 00;09;28;01

Holly Choi

Right. What’s on the other side of that string? And so he yanks on the cord and he brought down the whole rice cooker. I think especially now in the age of crock pot and Instant Pot and all of that stuff being really popular, it’s important to try to avoid using our outlets that are below counter height, and instead use ones that are back in the backsplash area above the counter.

 

00;09;28;04 – 00;09;49;02

Dr. Mona

That is such a great tip. The other thing that I see, which I am so big on pots that are over the edge of the counter. So again, my my son is already able to reach up above the above the island counter and that’s where our ranges. And so if a pot is basically at the edge and without you knowing, that pot can come falling down on that child.

 

00;09;49;02 – 00;09;59;18

Dr. Mona

So either using back burners like the ones that are not at the edge, or making sure that the handles are not over the edge of the counter, is one thing that I found that has been really helpful for us.

 

00;09;59;21 – 00;10;13;19

Holly Choi

Absolutely. Using the back burner is a huge one because it prevents both of those problems with one go. The official recommendation, in addition to those two things, is to try to keep a three foot bubble around the stovetop at any time you’ve got it in use.

 

00;10;13;24 – 00;10;32;06

Dr. Mona

You know, as a pediatrician, I see so many burns. And like I said, there’s a lot of different ways, children can get burns as accidents. You know, curling iron bladder irons. Everything looks exciting, like you said, to a toddler. And so just this is a great way, a great point to start. And anyone who wants more information about Burns definitely follow Safe Beginnings.

 

00;10;32;06 – 00;10;40;23

Dr. Mona

For more. The next one we’re going to talk about is something that you also talk about on your Instagram, which is the toilet roll test for choking hazard. So tell me more about that.

 

00;10;40;26 – 00;11;00;18

Holly Choi

Yeah. So the toilet roll test is a simple tool to determine if a particular item is too small for a child under age three to play unsupervised with. So, the idea is that if something fits right through a toilet roll, so it passes all the way through that, it means that they could fit that thing into their mouth.

 

00;11;00;20 – 00;11;24;18

Holly Choi

And while there are lots of toys on the market that are labeled as appropriate for even age six months and up that would fit through a toilet roll doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a choking hazard per se, but it does mean that if they can fit it in their mouth and they do happen to trip fall, you know, all sorts of things can happen to their teeth and to their palate when we do that.

 

00;11;24;21 – 00;11;45;05

Holly Choi

So, my first recommendation is just always look at the age recommendation on the toy and follow that religiously. It’s there for a reason. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission makes sure that we have those recommendations on toys to protect our children. So if you get something that’s age inappropriate for your child, just put it away for later.

 

00;11;45;05 – 00;12;03;28

Holly Choi

Say thank you, put it away for later. But when it comes to, I’ve got something in front of me that is age appropriate, but it fits through the toilet roll. It doesn’t mean you have to throw it out. It just means we should put it aside and only use that in situations where I am there to actually supervise the child playing with it.

 

00;12;04;00 – 00;12;14;15

Holly Choi

So I try to keep those toys in a separate bin as something as we’re going to play with this together. And here’s things that you can play with while I cook a meal or go to the washroom.

 

00;12;14;18 – 00;12;22;27

Dr. Mona

The next one is actually a really common one that I get asked a lot on my Instagram account, which is what do we do about gates on stairs?

 

00;12;23;00 – 00;12;47;04

Holly Choi

Yes. Okay, I am super big on this one. The recommendation for gates is if you have stairs in your home to use them at a minimum between 6 and 24 months of age. One of the things I tell parents in all of my classes is please avoid making assumptions about a child’s development, because it’s those times that we think that they can’t crawl, that they do.

 

00;12;47;06 – 00;13;09;21

Holly Choi

And, children often surprise us with their milestones, so we don’t want to avoid putting them up and waiting for them to make that first move. If a child’s not crawling at six months and you’ve got stairs, just put that it’s out. And that way we’re not locating them on the stairs. But there are two sort of now three main types of gates on the market.

 

00;13;09;23 – 00;13;32;10

Holly Choi

There are pressure mounted gates, and those are the ones you tighten into place. I like to see kind of like a shower curtain rod. There are hardware mounted gates that you screw into the home and then there are now this, sort of flexible mesh gate that you can get, which are technically hardware mounted. You do have to screw them in, but they retract.

 

00;13;33;01 – 00;13;58;21

Holly Choi

So the recommendation is at the top of the stairs, always avoiding pressure mounted gates. And the reason is that even a small child, if they throw their body weight against a pressure mounted gate, they can easily knock it down. And we don’t want them going down the stairs with the gate. So at the top of the stairs, it should always be hardware mounted at the bottom of the stairs or rooms on the same level.

 

00;13;58;21 – 00;14;30;13

Holly Choi

So if you’re in an apartment, for example, either option is totally fine. The catch with those retractable gates, I personally don’t recommend using them at the top of the stairs, even though they are technically hardware mounted. And that’s because some children have been known to push on them really hard and have them accidentally retract. The other is that you can push against the mesh, and if the mesh is too close to the top of that step, sometimes they can make a gap and slip out onto the step below.

 

00;14;30;16 – 00;14;41;20

Holly Choi

So ideally, using just a swinging hardware mounted gate at the top of the stairs and then you can make the choice on the rest of the gates that are either on the same level or at the bottom.

 

00;14;41;23 – 00;15;03;00

Dr. Mona

These are great tips. Now, do you recommend parents have to put they have to put this on, like you said, rooms in the house. Like is it really just based on preference for the parent where they plan on their child being unattended? Or do you just recommend putting it on all doorways and obviously any stairs? Even if a parent feels like, hey, I’m going to have my eyes on the child.

 

00;15;03;02 – 00;15;20;19

Holly Choi

Yeah. So stairs are just a non-negotiable for me. But otherwise, you know, if you do have a room that’s going to be a safe place space, that’s a great opportunity. Some people will use them in the kitchen if they notice that it’s becoming a problem. But I like to remind parents that not all baby proofing has to be 100%.

 

00;15;20;19 – 00;15;30;29

Holly Choi

Day one. There’s things that can be, you know, added as we go, as more of a reactive measure. But when it comes to the stairs, you want to be proactive with that one.

 

00;15;31;01 – 00;15;39;04

Dr. Mona

The next one is one that I also am very passionate about educating parents about is anchoring furniture to prevent tip over injuries.

 

00;15;39;07 – 00;16;01;09

Holly Choi

Yes. I think, there’s been a really interesting shift in this particular mindset over the last few years, and I say that because of the really well known Ikea recall. Yeah. Ikea had a number of dressers that were falling on children and in some cases they were fatal injuries. And, so Ikea recalled a bunch of their dressers.

 

00;16;01;09 – 00;16;23;20

Holly Choi

And I feel very strongly about this particular recall, because it has created a bit of a perception that this was an Ikea problem, when in reality we know that this has been a problem since furniture has been around. I like to remind parents to always think about furniture from the eyes of the toddler. Again, does a bookcase look like a ladder?

 

00;16;23;20 – 00;16;47;10

Holly Choi

Could I pull the drawers out of a dresser and make a staircase. Is there something up there I really want to play with? But I can’t reach right now, and we need to assume that they may climb those things if the answer is yes. So the recommendation and this sounds this sounds really extreme, but please hear me out, is anything that’s three feet tall or taller and heavy should be anchored to the wall?

 

00;16;47;12 – 00;17;15;17

Holly Choi

I will say really explicitly, children have died from shorter furniture. And if anyone is interested in delving into more details on this, there’s a really amazing advocacy group, called Megan’s Hope, which is run by, Megan’s mom. Megan was lost in a furniture tip over incident a number of years ago, but her particular piece of furniture was a changed table sort of dresser combo unit that was shorter than three feet.

 

00;17;15;17 – 00;17;46;01

Holly Choi

So I just like to remind parents that it’s it’s really easy to think, oh, I’m going to put this off and I’ll just wait until they’re mobile, just get it done. That sometime aside this week. Get it done. If you check out my resources through the link in my bio over on Instagram, I do have a free guide on anchoring furniture with resources from the International Association for Child Safety on how to properly anchor furniture, what materials you need, and what tools are required to do that.

 

00;17;46;04 – 00;17;50;02

Holly Choi

It’s super important. Set some time aside, just get it done.

 

00;17;50;04 – 00;18;09;08

Dr. Mona

Yes, I agree completely because these are just some tragic, tragic stories that we’ve heard. I have personally never taken care of a child in the E.R. on my residency training, but we have heard of them come through and it is just devastating. All injuries are devastating, but obviously the weight of the item that’s coming down on them, it just, again, is one of those split split-second things.

 

00;18;09;15 – 00;18;28;07

Dr. Mona

I highly advocate for this as well. And any furniture that’s in a space that you may be cooking, they may be walking around, you know, obviously bookcases, TV stands like anything that you would just be having your child walk unattended in that room. It’s just one little thing, and it doesn’t take that long to mount at all.

 

00;18;28;10 – 00;18;48;23

Dr. Mona

We’ve actually slowly started the mounting process. We’ve done Ryan’s room, and then now we’re working on the living room stuff, and I will again attach those resources that you mentioned to my show notes for people who are interested. The next one is also a common injury that I see in outpatient pediatrics. And this is never leave a child unattended on an elevated surface.

 

00;18;48;26 – 00;19;21;06

Holly Choi

Yes. So, going back to what I was saying earlier about avoiding assumptions about a child’s development, I’m sure you can back me up on this one. There is a huge misconception out there that newborns can’t roll, and I think that this is mostly in the idea that, of course, they don’t roll with intention. They don’t think to themselves, I’m going to roll over now, but because they just have so much weight in their head, approximately 30% of their body weight is in their head and movement of their head, their body can go with them.

 

00;19;21;06 – 00;19;42;22

Holly Choi

I’ve had so many parents reach out to me and say, thank you for saying this, because my newborn almost rolled off of the Joey bed in the nick cue or almost rolled off of the waist scale at the hospital. And of course, they didn’t try to do that, but it’s just the weight in their head. So, really common question I get is, you know, is this really a problem?

 

00;19;42;24 – 00;20;09;11

Holly Choi

Do I really need to, you know, make sure that, like, if they can’t move that much, what if I just leave them sort of wedged into the crack of a couch for a minute while I get up and grab a coffee? The thing is that we really can’t make that assumption. One of the leading ways that children are injured from a fall is rolling off of the change table, and I’m sure a lot of parents can relate to this particular scenario where you’re changing a child.

 

00;20;09;15 – 00;20;29;08

Holly Choi

Maybe they’re totally covered in poop and then you open up your diaper drawer and realize, I’m out of diapers. I’m out of waves. And so you think to yourself, okay, I’ve got them in the closet behind me. I’m just going to quickly turn around, grab them. It should be fine. They’re a newborn. It’s not. Nothing bad is going to happen.

 

00;20;29;08 – 00;20;55;18

Holly Choi

And in that moment, the child turns their head to look at you and their body follows them. And, I’ve I’ve personally heard many, many stories of this. And so then the question becomes, well, what’s the point of the belt then? Weren’t they using the belt? All the belts on a change pad are designed to do is allow you enough freedom to take one hand off the child to grab an adjacent wipe or diaper.

 

00;20;56;02 – 00;21;14;15

Holly Choi

The child can still go out the other end of the change pad. I’ve also heard stories of children going off the end of the change table and into the diaper bed next to it. So, the only way we could truly keep a child on a change pad unattended is if they were in a five point harness.

 

00;21;14;15 – 00;21;33;08

Holly Choi

If you think of a car seat harness, for example, and then we wouldn’t be able to change their diaper. So for that reason, both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Pediatric Society advocate for if you can, if possible, change diapers on the ground if you can physically manage it, because it prevents all of these problems.

 

00;21;33;08 – 00;21;42;23

Holly Choi

And then if you are in that situation where maybe your partner left you stranded without diapers and you didn’t even realize it, that’s okay. If they’re on the ground, they can’t be hurt.

 

00;21;42;25 – 00;22;03;06

Dr. Mona

I will add that the newborns falling off of a parent while the parent is cuddling with the baby on the couch, which we’re not even talking about safe sleep on this episode, but the baby rolls over, rolls off the bed. So many of these stories, I mean, think, gosh, a lot of them turn out okay. I mean, I have not had major, major issues.

 

00;22;03;06 – 00;22;22;14

Dr. Mona

I have had some that have had fractures from this in their school. But it even the the height of a bed, you know, obviously your baby newborn baby when they also get that momentum. Right like you said like they’re looking at you and their arm swings over. Right. That arm gives them that momentum and they go rolling. And none of us intend for this to happen.

 

00;22;22;14 – 00;22;36;06

Dr. Mona

I think I have so many parents come in with this that are so upset at themselves. And I get it that we are, you know, there’s guilt that comes when we cause an injury for our child. But that’s how we learn, right? We learn. Okay, I’m not going to do this again. This is what this episode is about.

 

00;22;36;17 – 00;22;47;29

Dr. Mona

Because we don’t want that to happen again. We don’t want that to happen for any parents who may be listening. But next one, you kind of mentioned about straps with car seats, but using straps on high chairs was another one that you mentioned.

 

00;22;48;01 – 00;23;15;07

Holly Choi

Yes, I did a post on this recently and I found it fascinating. Now I’m sure you know that the internet is a minefield of parenting advice, and there are some that’s really qualified and there’s some that’s just opinion based. When it comes to straps on high chairs, they are essential. And I see that as both a educator of injury prevention, but also as a first aid instructor.

 

00;23;15;20 – 00;23;35;18

Holly Choi

And that’s just because a lot of parents, especially around the time of starting to get really anxious with what if my child chokes? I am so nervous about choking. I don’t want to do up the belts on the high chair, because I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to get them out or, you know, they’ve got the bib, they’ve got all this stuff on, I’m not going to have time to react.

 

00;23;35;20 – 00;24;07;01

Holly Choi

I want to assure you, as a first aid instructor, you have enough time to react. Choking maneuvers on small children are so effective and very quick when done correctly, and they are much more likely to be injured with the weight of their head by leaning off the side of a high chair and falling out. The main thing for me, where the non-negotiable piece of this is, is the hip straps have to be tight if they can get out of the hip strap, then they can get out of the high chair.

 

00;24;07;03 – 00;24;27;27

Holly Choi

So the shoulder straps are great, but the hip straps are the main thing that have to be tight. My particular tip for parents around this, and especially I’m hoping that in 2021 we can all start to go out and go to restaurants and start to enjoy those things again. If you are going out to restaurants regularly, you know this problem.

 

00;24;27;27 – 00;24;51;06

Holly Choi

You get one of those plastic high chairs at a restaurant and you cannot get the straps tight. They’re always the wrong size for your child every single year, and your food’s getting cold and you don’t want to deal with it. So most parents will just go, oh, whatever, please take the time. Or my personal tip is get a portable booster seat.

 

00;24;51;11 – 00;25;12;09

Holly Choi

My favorite one is made by OXO, but they have seats that have a really good hip, strap belt on them. And then they also have straps that go over the side of the chair and front to back so that it is buckled physically on to a chair. There’s a lot of benefits to using this approach because you’ll always have a seat with you, so you’re never stranded.

 

00;25;12;11 – 00;25;37;26

Holly Choi

It’s clean. So you’re not questioning who’s been in this chair, what happened in it, and it’s always going to be adjusted properly for your child. So if you have something that they are comfortable with that they use regularly, it makes that process a lot easier. The reason I like the OXO one, aside from the fact that it’s got all of those safety straps, is that it folds in half and it’s really easy to just keep it in the trunk or hatch of your car.

 

00;25;37;28 – 00;25;55;00

Dr. Mona

Yeah, these are great tips. And your comment about parents being worried about the choking. I get that comment a lot on my Instagram. I actually had a issue with Ryan choking on a piece of watermelon, and I can attest to the fact that you will take that baby out faster than you probably even realize that you don’t even remember.

 

00;25;55;06 – 00;26;09;18

Dr. Mona

Like how you got that baby out of the highchair when you see them in distress and you will do the back blows and you’ll be you’ll be fine. So we had the bit, we had him strapped. We actually had him in a feeding bib, everything and we were able to get him out of that, obviously, and do what we needed to do.

 

00;26;09;18 – 00;26;27;06

Dr. Mona

So you will. And if you have any questions about first aid or anything like that, I know Holly has some resources, but it’s so important that you guys are trained in first aid. And remember that you can put your child in those straps and still get them out. The next one is really important to me too, which is getting your car seat checked.

 

00;26;27;08 – 00;26;52;14

Holly Choi

Yes. So I’ve been in the child passenger safety field for over five years now, and I actually sit on our national board of directors for Child Passenger Safety, and I am very, very passionate about this. And if you had talked to me six years ago, I would have laughed at you because it’s a weird it’s a really weird thing to be obsessed with, but the statistics are overwhelming.

 

00;26;52;17 – 00;27;22;05

Holly Choi

I actually took the training course out of postpartum boredom, because it was so close to where I was living and I could take my daughter with me. And I was already, you know, getting involved in the safety world. So I thought, why not? When I got there, I was floored. Absolutely floored by the statistics in I can speak in Canada, we have an estimated rate by the Canadian Pediatric Society of 81% of car seats not used correctly in the US.

 

00;27;22;05 – 00;27;48;02

Holly Choi

So if kids worldwide suggest that that can be anywhere from 40% to all the way to 95%, those are wild statistics. And when you think about it, motor vehicle collisions are a leading cause of death in young children. And if there’s one thing out there that we can do correctly to prevent them from having that injury, we should be doing it.

 

00;27;48;04 – 00;28;09;19

Holly Choi

And, the reason that a lot of these things are happening, obviously no one’s doing this on purpose. No one’s like, oh, I like to injure my child. But what’s happening is that every car seat is wildly different. They all have their own rules. Car seats can only protect a child when we follow the rules. And it’s how the seat was engineered and crash tested.

 

00;28;09;22 – 00;28;29;24

Holly Choi

The example I like to give parents of this is infant car seats, the ones that have a handle on them. They all have a very specific rule about where that handle should live when you’re driving. So for example, some of them tell you to leave the handle upright. Some of them ask you to put it forward by the child’s seat, and some of them tell you to put it back past the child’s head.

 

00;28;29;27 – 00;28;54;13

Holly Choi

The reason that each seat has a rule, but that that rule is different from one seat to the other. That’s where the handle was when the seat passed. Crash testing. If we want kids to be protected, we have to follow all those little rules so it gets really overwhelming because there is a lot to know, and you have to know how to look at your vehicle information and the car seat information and put those things together.

 

00;28;54;16 – 00;29;20;28

Holly Choi

The easiest thing you can do is reach out to a child passenger safety technician in your community and get your car seat checked. There are amazing free resources for this. You can check out Safe kids.org if you’re in the US, and if anyone’s listening from Canada, it’s zip sac.org which is CP, S.A.C. dot org is our national website and you can through those websites find a technician in your area, meet up with them and get your car seat checked.

 

00;29;21;01 – 00;29;42;14

Holly Choi

There are some technicians that offer virtual appointments as well. If you’re uncomfortable seeing someone in person or unable to for any reason, but I do recommend seeing someone in person and getting that hands on experience. It is absolutely worth the about an hour or so on average that you will spend with someone to just know you’re doing it right and move on from there.

 

00;29;42;16 – 00;30;01;17

Dr. Mona

I actually use a child passenger safety technician as well when we are changing things with our car seat. When Ryan went from an infant to convertible, car seat, we actually used it to in Covid times, it was all virtual for our local fire departments, child passenger safety technicians, but it was still a great resource and I’ll touch those links as well.

 

00;30;01;19 – 00;30;08;12

Dr. Mona

The next one is really important, which is what to do if you suspect your child ingested something poisonous.

 

00;30;08;14 – 00;30;49;07

Holly Choi

Yes. So this is a really interesting one because a lot of parents right now are 80s and 90s babies. And back then, when our parents were parents, they were told in most cases to induce vomiting. If you suspect a child ingest something poisonous, we now know that sometimes that can make things twice as bad. And so therefore the current recommendation for if you suspect a child has ingested something poisonous is to phone poison control and get correct advice, poison control will tell you if it’s even a problem, if you can treat at home, or if you do actually need to go to a hospital.

 

00;30;49;09 – 00;31;11;17

Holly Choi

But it’s really important that we phone and get correct advice from poison control before we start choosing what we’re going to do ourselves. And, I had a really amazing, story told in one of my classes where a mom told everyone in the class that her son had came up to her and said, hey, mom, this yogurt tasted weird.

 

00;31;11;17 – 00;31;34;19

Holly Choi

He was about to and he passed her one of those little Sam sample MTB paint containers from Home Depot. Those little tiny paint pots you can get to color. And according to her, minus what he had on himself, he ingested the whole thing. And I think, you know, we get really caught up in lock things up, keep things up high, which we should absolutely do.

 

00;31;34;21 – 00;31;56;12

Holly Choi

But it’s important to take a moment to recognize that, before we go shaming people who have had poisoning incidents, this is a really common thing to happen, because you could legitimately forget something in the blur of parenthood. In her case, he had asked her for a snack, so she abandoned what she was doing and went to get him a snack and he found his own,

 

00;31;56;15 – 00;32;16;16

Holly Choi

And luckily he was fine. But, also, you know, if someone comes over to your house and puts their bag on the ground, kids find stuff. So it’s just important that you have the number for poison control posted in your phone, or in your home, I should say. Or recorded somewhere in your phone on speed dial so that if you do need to use it, you’ve got it.

 

00;32;16;18 – 00;32;42;14

Holly Choi

And I really strongly recommend if you have any grandparents watching children, just make sure that they know the advice is to phone poison control, because if they haven’t had a baby in their life for maybe 30 or so years, they probably just don’t realize that the advice has changed. So important to have that in the US, that number is the same regardless of where you live, it’s one 802 2 to 1 two two, two.

 

00;32;42;17 – 00;32;53;25

Holly Choi

If you are listening from somewhere else, I recommend googling your poison control center number I can speak for here in Canada. It’s different for every place, so you have to look that one up.

 

00;32;53;27 – 00;33;16;13

Dr. Mona

And even pediatricians, we have to call poison control often the ICU when I was in residency and also when we get phone calls from, families, they they have the most up to date information regarding whatever was ingested. And it’s just something that we like to talk to poison Control about, too. So this is a resource that’s great for doctors, great for medical professionals, and also for parents as well.

 

00;33;16;16 – 00;33;25;00

Dr. Mona

Now the last one was really important as well, which is why you think every parent needs Life-Saving skills like first aid.

 

00;33;25;07 – 00;33;55;08

Holly Choi

Yeah, absolutely. I think when it comes down to it, when you become a parent, I think you inherit a certain amount of anxiety because now you went from being responsible for just yourself to being responsible for someone else. And, we often will get ourselves into those worst case scenario mindset. One of the easiest ways you can solve that is just by setting aside a day, or even a few hours, and learning some first aid skills.

 

00;33;55;23 – 00;34;19;02

Holly Choi

I’ve been a first aid instructor now for over five years, and I absolutely love what I do. And I focus specifically in pediatric first aid. But it’s really important to just have those skills to know what to do if a child goes unconscious, if a child stops breathing, which is CPR, or if they choke, and then that way, if you are ever in that worst case scenario, you know what to do.

 

00;34;19;05 – 00;34;41;29

Holly Choi

And I think it’s always important to just be prepared with that stuff. We obviously hope that we never use those skills, but people do. Like you said, you’ve already used your choking skills before, and I think, you know, we would rather have those in advance. It’s like an insurance policy that we hope we don’t use it, but if we ever need it, we want to have it.

 

00;34;42;00 – 00;35;00;28

Holly Choi

So I really strongly encourage parents to seek out a course that will work for them. I do teach online as well. And you can check us out through the show notes, but find something that is going to work for you that meets your needs and get some essential life saving skills.

 

00;35;01;00 – 00;35;21;06

Dr. Mona

Oh Holly, these were all such great tips. I mean, I know this is just the tip of the iceberg and there’s so much more that we could talk about, but I really think this episode encompassed all the things that I see, as well as a pediatrician in terms of injuries and what you see as well, with all of your training, what would be a final message for all of our parents listening today?

 

00;35;21;08 – 00;35;46;06

Holly Choi

Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing to take away is we do the best with the information we have. Never be upset with your past self for not knowing something. Take it as a lesson and move on. You can always, you know, learn and prepare yourself by doing things like learning essential life saving skills. But I always think about grandparents when I’m talking about safety.

 

00;35;46;06 – 00;36;03;17

Holly Choi

And I think a lot of grandparents often feel shamed when it comes to safety, because we’ll say things like, well, we did all this stuff that wasn’t safe when we were kids, and it’s just important to always remember we do the best with the information that we have. Keep yourself informed and make good choices.

 

00;36;03;20 – 00;36;25;17

Dr. Mona

It’s okay that you made a mistake. Obviously, we learn from the mistake. That’s the most important thing. And I hate on social media in real life when parents are just shamed for a mistake, an accident, right? They. Oh, well, you should have done this. Of course they know that. Of course they should have done that. But telling them that in the moment when they’re grieving an injury or loss of a child is not what they need to hear.

 

00;36;25;17 – 00;36;41;07

Dr. Mona

They just need to hear compassion. They just need to hear that, okay, we’re going to get through this. And that is my message because I’m sure you have seen that too. It’s devastating when when children get injured or, you know, obviously worse when there’s a death. It’s something that every parent understands. They understand that they made a mistake.

 

00;36;41;07 – 00;36;49;18

Dr. Mona

And I don’t think it’s a place for anyone else to hash that drill, that guilt into that parent. There’s no need for that and no place for that in this world.

 

00;36;49;21 – 00;36;51;21

Holly Choi

Amen to that and everyone.

 

00;36;51;21 – 00;36;56;11

Dr. Mona

I’m going to be attaching all the resources that we talked about. Holly, thanks again for joining us today.

 

00;36;56;14 – 00;36;59;13

Holly Choi

Thank you so much for having me.

 

00;36;59;15 – 00;37;15;08

Dr. Mona

Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. As always, please leave a review. Share this episode with a friend. Share it on your social media. Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel, PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.