I have heard a cou­ple things in the last cou­ple days that make me want to put these warn­ings out there in the hopes that more than 10 peo­ple, 5 of whom I know, are read­ing this.

Today there was a news report of the grow­ing con­cern of kids swal­low­ing those very small but­ton bat­ter­ies. They are in your remotes, scales, ther­mome­ters, kids toys that make noise and more worrisome…those greet­ing cards you get that “sing”. In most kids toys, the bat­ter­ies can only be removed with a tool, as a screw and cap keep most in. Check your kids toys!! If it is just a slide in cap, more than likely your genius tod­dler will soon fig­ure out how to slide the cap off!! When you get a singing card, imme­di­ately remove and destroy the bat­tery!! I know my 19 month old grand­son loves gad­gets. He exam­ines them like a doc­tor, I am sure mostly to see how many but­tons work and what they do, but exam­ine them he does!! He is 19 months old!! The but­ton bat­ter­ies are incred­i­bly easy to swal­low. However…once they are swal­lowed, they imme­di­ately begin to cor­rode what­ever they come in con­tact with. Because the symp­toms mimic flu, most par­ents don’t know what hap­pened until it becomes extremely seri­ous and they finally do an x-ray!! 9 chil­dren have died from this and that is 9 too many!! Not to men­tion count­less oth­ers with severe dam­age to their esoph­a­gus and lungs!! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE… pay atten­tion to this and right now go check your home for this silent problem!!

The sec­ond thing, and I know this one from expe­ri­ence, was a very small tod­dler who picked up and started chew­ing on the clear plas­tic wrap that a mother had removed from a bot­tle of infant/childrens tylenol.  You know what it is…that plas­tic that sur­rounds the lid that “if tam­pered with” you are to throw the prod­uct away? It comes on most meds for kids and adults now. And because it is clear, it is impos­si­ble to see in their mouths when the child is chok­ing!! It gets over the air­way and gets suc­tioned to the roof of their mouths and they can’t breathe and you can’t see it!! Always sweep the roof of their mouth to see if this is what is going on!! Always!! When my grand­daugh­ter was chok­ing, it was on the clear plas­tic removed from the sticky part of a band-aid I had put on her a bit ear­lier!! Clear plas­tic that is soft, eas­ily forms to the roof of mouths and they can­not breath!! Luck­ily I was able to feel it and pull it out!!I have hated those things ever since and always make sure to bury them deep in the garbage as soon as I remove!

To manufacturers.…if you have to wrap this stuff for our pro­tec­tion make it an easy to see color!! It is eas­ier to see when it is dropped on the floor and eas­ier to see if they put in their mouths!! Same goes for the cov­ers on bandaids!! Make them vis­i­ble!!! And for god sakes…use your heads and don’t make them red or orange or any color that blends in with the mouth!!!

We can­not watch our kids 24–7 even if we think we are the most alert par­ent in the world!! We can­not know what they will put in their mouths even though we scan their play area with an eagle eye! We can­not say they won’t put some­thing in their mouth because “they know bet­ter” or “they never put things in their mouth”!!  Yes, they do and have prob­a­bly swal­lowed stuff, that if you knew, would have you cring­ing. They are not bad kids intent on mis­chief. They are oral kids try­ing to fig­ure life out and we have to be their guardians!!

Please write or call the man­u­fac­tur­ers of these prod­ucts and let them know this has to change. I am beg­ging you to not let one more lit­tle life be lost because we are too lazy to make a call or write!! And check your stuff today!!