Magnetic Toy Danger Reminder

 

 

Refrigerator magnets and other magnetic toys can provide a fun, educational experience for many young children. However, loose magnets and magnetic toys designed for adults can cause serious injuries and lifelong impacts for children and teens.

In 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was successful in advocating for new Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) safety standards for children’s products and toys that contain magnets. These new standards help keep children safe by ensuring that magnets in children’s products will not fall out or become dislodged. This decreases the risk of loose magnets being swallowed by young children. 

Unfortunately, the new safety standards only apply to children’s products. Many magnets are found in products designed for adult use. Recently, children have been injured as a result of swallowing small, round magnets marketed as “stress relief” desk toys for adults. 

Here are Tips from the AAP :

Use the tips below to protect your children from the dangers of magnets:

• Keep products with small or loose magnets away from young children who might swallow them.
• Closely monitor loose magnets and other magnetic products to ensure children do not swallow them.
• Avoid purchasing magnets sold in sets of 100 or more, as it is difficult to recognize if a few magnets have gone missing.
• Talk to your older children and teens about the serious dangers associated with using magnets as fake piercings in their mouths or noses.

Know the symptoms of magnet ingestion:

• Children who have ingested magnets may have abdominal pain, vomiting, and fever. Because these symptoms are common in children and not usually caused by ingested objects, the true cause may not be suspected right away.
• Delaying treatment can lead to severe injuries to the stomach, intestines, and digestive tract and even death.
• Contact your pediatrician or nearest emergency department immediately if you suspect your child has swallowed or been injured by a magnet.

Report injuries and incidences of magnet ingestions to the CPSC:

If your child has swallowed a magnet and/or been injured by a magnetic product, you can report that injury to the CPSC, the federal agency tasked with ensuring children’s toys and other consumer products are safe.

The CPSC has an online database for parents and the general public to report dangerous products and injuries related to consumer products directly to the agency.  Anyone can visit SaferProducts.gov to report injuries related to magnet ingestions or other products directly to the CPSC. 

The site requests, but does not require, the injured victim’s information. The CPSC must publicly disclose accident or investigation reports, but does not include identifying information for any injured individual or the person reporting the incident. If further information is necessary, the CPSC will contact the reporting individual directly, but such contact information is not shared with others.
Stronger regulatory action to remove dangerous magnets and magnetic products from the marketplace may depend on the CPSC receiving reports of injuries associated with these products.  Parents and others who witness magnet-related injuries are encouraged to report the incidents to the CPSC.

To read the full article CLICK HERE

**thanks to the AAP and Healthychildren.org for some great information

Happy Memorial day and Office Hours

We hope you have a wonderful Memorial day weekend. We wanted you to know that we will be open this weekend for Urgent Care sick appointments. Willow Creek Pediatrics is open 364 days a year and we always have a nurse or doctor to answer any of your questions.  Please know that on weekends we book in consecutive order as a courtesy to our patients and are happy to see your SICK child. We most likely will only be in the office in the mornings so if you want an appointment call early. We hope you have a great and safe weekend. Here is a list of when our phones turn on this weekend. Happy Memorial Day!

Saturday: 8:30 am

Sunday: 9:30 am

Monday: 9:30 am





We can learn from Summer Camps

 

Dr Jopling found this great article about What Schools can Learn from Summer Camps by Annie Murphy Paul. Click here to read the full article or part of the article below. It is a great resource to think about before our children start this summer break!

As warm weather approaches and parents sign up their kids for summer enrichment programs, many may wonder how long the effects of these programs last. Do their benefits persist into the school year, or do they disappear come September?

A study led by Stanford University psychologist Paul O’Keefe, released online this month by the journal Motivation and Emotion, offers some heartening news: Students’ improvements in attitude and motivation stick around well after summer turns to fall.

Over the course of nine months, O’Keefe and his coauthors assessed a group of eighth-, ninth-, and tenth-graders three times: once before the end of the school year, once during their summer enrichment program, and a final time six months after the end of the program.

Reward intellectual risk-taking, and avoid punishing students for failed experiments.

 

The researchers were looking at the teenagers’ “goal orientations”—were they interested in learning for learning’s sake, or in showing off their smarts? The first type of attitude, called a “mastery orientation,” has been linked to high levels of motivation and engagement, while the second, known as a “performance orientation,” has been tied to greater anxiety and less resilience in the face of failure.

During the summer enrichment program, the students became more apt to favor a mastery approach, endorsing statements such as “It’s important to me that I learn a lot of new concepts in science,” and discounting statements like, “One of my goals is to show others that I’m good at science,” which indicate a performance orientation.

The surprise was that the teenagers’ embrace of mastery remained strong even after they returned to school—which, with its tests and rankings, often places more emphasis on performance than on learning for its own sake.

As cheering as this finding may be, it in turn raises another question: How can we carry the mastery orientation cultivated in summer enrichment programs into the rest of the year? For the answer, look more closely at what the program in this study does right. Called the Talent Identification Program, it is held on the campus of Duke University and lasts for three weeks, during which participants attend academically rigorous classes for seven hours on weekdays and three hours on Saturdays. The courses, which include subjects like Aerospace Engineering, Introduction to Medical Science, Marine Biology, and Pharmacology, are deliberately designed to emphasize mastery and de-emphasize performance.

Some key characteristics:

• The program promotes collaboration, playing down competition among students and fostering “a collegial attitude towards fellow learners.”
• Its instructors offer what O’Keefe calls “autonomy support,” encouraging students “to draw their own conclusions and justify them, explore aspects of class subjects that interest them most, and make decisions regarding what they prefer to learn and how they would like to learn those materials.”
• The program rewards intellectual risk-taking, and avoids punishing students for failed experiments.
• Feedback given to students recognizes effort and growth and focuses on the learning process, rather than on its outcome.

As O’Keefe’s study demonstrates, summer enrichment programs offer lasting benefits for those lucky enough to participate in them. What would be even better? Every student encouraged to learn for mastery, all school year long.

***info from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/feature/learning-smarter/

Drowning Reminder as Summer starts

As the weather gets better and we all start to make plans for the summer months we wanted you to be aware of a new study that was just done. Read part of the article, provided by Dr Jopling, and also POOL SAFETY tips from the AAP below! Your child safety is always on our minds :)....

May 19--Drowning Top Cause of Injury Deaths in Kids 1-4---Although the death rate for drowning in the U.S. has gone down in the last decade, drowning leads to more deaths among young children aged 1 to 4 than any other cause except birth defects, a new report from the CDC reveals.

Between 2005 and 2009, the death rates from accidental drowning were higher among children under 4 years of age than for any other age group, the report shows. About half of these deadly incidents in young children took place at swimming pools.

Kids under 4 also had the highest rate of nonfatal drownings, meaning injuries from near drowning that may have landed them in the emergency room or in the hospital. Swimming pools were the site of roughly 65% of these near drownings in preschoolers.
Researchers also found that for each year between 2005 and 2009, an average of 3,880 Americans lost their lives to drowning and nearly 5,800 people a year were estimated to have sought treatment in the emergency room because of a near-drowning episode.

The researchers suggest that taking swimming lessons while young can teach life-saving skills to help prevent drownings and water-related injuries. Wearing life jackets, installing four-sided pool fencing, and giving bystander CPR can also help lessen the number of lives lost or injuries.

To read the full article please click HERE

Pool Safety (from the AAP)

• Never leave children alone in or near the pool or spa, even for a moment.
• Install a fence at least 4 feet high around all four sides of the pool. The fence should not have openings or protrusions that a young child could use to get over, under, or through.
• Make sure pool gates open out from the pool, and self-close and self-latch at a height children can't reach.
• If the house serves as the fourth side of a fence surrounding a pool, install an alarm on the exit door to the yard and the pool.
• Keep rescue equipment (a shepherd's hook — a long pole with a hook on the end — and life preserver) and a portable telephone near the pool. Choose a shepherd’s hook and other rescue equipment made of fiberglass or other materials that do not conduct electricity.
• Avoid inflatable swimming aids such as “floaties.” They are not a substitute for approved life vests and can give children and parents a false sense of security.
• Children ages 1 to 4 may be at a lower risk of drowning if they have had some formal swimming instruction. However, there is no evidence that swimming lessons or water survival skills courses can prevent drowning in babies younger than 1 year of age.
• The decision to enroll a 1- to 4-year-old child in swimming lessons should be made by the parent and based on the child’s developmental readiness, but swim programs should never be seen as “drown proofing” a child of any age.
• Whenever infants or toddlers are in or around water, an adult – preferably one who knows how to swim and perform CPR – should be within arm’s length, providing “touch supervision.”
• Avoid entrapment: Suction from pool and spa drains can trap a swimmer underwater. Do not use a pool or spa if there are broken or missing drain covers. Ask your pool operator if your pool or spa’s drains are compliant with the Pool and Spa Safety Act. If you have a swimming pool or spa, ask your pool service representative to update your drains and other suction fitting with anti-entrapment drain covers and other devices or systems. See PoolSafely.gov for more information on the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act.
• Large, inflatable, above-ground pools have become increasingly popular for backyard use. Children may fall in if they lean against the soft side of an inflatable pool. Although such pools are often exempt from local pool fencing requirements, it is essential that they be surrounded by an appropriate fence just as a permanent pool would be so that children cannot gain unsupervised access.

 **info from CDC
**Info about POOL SAFETY from Healthychildren.org/ and the AAP

Guest Week 5: Questions Come From Interest

Questions Come From Interest

What does your child wonder about?

Emily A. Swan, Ph.D.

Have you been reading to your children? Have you been talking to them about books?

Last week, I talked about ways to make reading more fun and interesting for you and your children. Two of those ways involve questions.

This week, I am going to talk about the topic of QUESTIONS and how important your child’s questions are to teaching you about your child’s interests. If we really listen to our children’s questions and what they wonder, we will truly gain insights into their thinking! When we know what our children’s interests are and what they wonder, finding the right books is easy!

The Importance of QUESTIONS

“WHY?” How many thousands of times have your children asked you this question? How many times have you secretly wished you could remove just a small portion of your child’s frontal lobe after the 47^th time s/he asks it in the same day? But, let me tell you… it’s a good thing you can’t! Questions are the secret to learning. Questions are the secret to interest! Questions are the tools our children give to us so we can help them gain knowledge through reading.

These are the reasons WHY questions are so important to learning:

1.    Questions are diagnostic tools! You know exactly what your child is thinking when they ask a question. Their question is what is on their mind right now. And really, until that question gets answered, the child has a difficult time moving on. So rather than answering the question for your child, try and answer with another question, such as: “I’m not sure, what do you think?” Reflecting the question back on the child allows them to solve the problem, figure out sources for the answer, and they will retain the answer for longer periods of time than if we just answer their questions for them.

2.    Questions make more sense to kids when we phrase them as, “What do you wonder?” rather than, “What questions do you have?” Kids wonder about everything. Tapping into this wonder is what makes reading and learning FUN.

a.    Do you have a child within a 2 minute radius of you right now? Go ahead. Go and ask your child, (any age will do), “What are you wondering about?” if they are 5, they might tell you for 30 minutes. If they are 16, they may grunt and say, “nothing. Why?”  So, right there—what did you learn?? Who has more curiosity? Maybe it’s your 16 year old. GREAT! Feed that curiosity with things to help your child find answers to their own “wonderings.” Ask them what the answers are and how they found them.

3.    Questions have different levels of answers, which yield different levels of knowledge. For example, some questions are pretty thin. “Who was buried in Grant’s tomb?” has a pretty thin or simple answer. But “What do you know about Grant’s life and death?” might be a bit thicker question, which will probably take a little longer explanation. The simpler or thinner the question, the easier the question is to answer, resulting in simple or concrete knowledge. A thicker question, however, may take more reading, more thinking, more time, and more resources to answer. Thicker questions result in much deeper levels of knowledge, more abstract thinking, and more complex explanations.

4.    Questions are a GREAT reason to read books! Do you know how roly-poly bugs have babies? Do you know all the constellations in the summer sky? Do you know the state bird of Maryland? Do you know why May 17^th was an important day to George Washington and the Patriots during the American Revolutionary War?  If not, START READING!! Reading is the #1 way to answer questions!

5.    The only stupid question is the one you already know how to answer. Here’s a real life story about this principle.  I was a reading consultant in Iowa for several years. I worked with some great teachers, teaching them how to engage their students more deeply. One 6^th grade (really smart) science teacher, who had recently begun a unit on Energy, had asked his students what they knew about Energy and what they wondered about Energy. He had their questions written on sentence strips up on the wall. He had a large class and when I went to Iowa for a visit, I observed his classroom and I noticed that there were only about 7 or 8 questions up on the wall, which made me curious. I asked him, “Why don’t you have all of the students’ questions on the wall?” His reply was, “Oh, those are the only good questions.” I then asked, “Who determines which question is good enough to go up on the wall?” and he replied, “I do. The rest of the questions are too dumb to put on the wall.” Of course, I asked to see the other questions. Keep in mind that I am NOT a scientist, nor do I claim to be. But I do know how to engage kids in science using literacy principles; so I was very curious to read the other students’ questions that hadn’t made it onto the wall. When I looked at the questions, I thought they were pretty good, simply because I didn’t know how to answer them either! I felt just like the 6^th graders, wondering the same things! I said to the teacher, “What is wrong with these questions? They look good to me. Why do you think they are dumb?” and the teacher replied, “Oh those are so easy to answer.” And my response was, “Yes. To a scientist they probably are easy. But to a 6^th grader, or even to me, they are not easy at all because we don’t have enough knowledge to answer them. That’s why you are the teacher and they are the 6^th graders!” 

          My point is: The only dumb question is the one in which you already know the    answer! All other questions are where you are (or where your child is) in the   learning process. So listen to your kids’ questions, even if you think they are easy        to answer. Remember, you’re the adult. So of course they’re easy for YOU to     answer!!

Action Plan for This Week:  LISTEN to your children’s questions. Write them down if you can. Pay attention. YOU, as a parent, will discover things about your child that will help you engage them in learning.

Next week I will provide a list of some of my favorite books I have read to and with my children! Hopefully, the list will give you some ideas for fun summer reading!

If you are interested in how to build literacy skills over the summer with your preschooler or Kindergartener. . . My business partner Michelle Roderick and I have created a tool for parents to maximize the time they spend reading to their young children. One tool that will soon be available to parents, grandparents, babysitters, or other caretakers, is our product called DiscoverLit Kits. These wonderful kits are designed around a book (e.g., Bugs) and we have written research-based activities around these wonderful books that increase comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, word study/phonics, and writing. We include easy step-by-step instructions for mothers and others that are easy to follow. We also integrate math, science, or art into our kits to extend learning. They help parents and children discover the fun of literacy. . .in a kit. The kit ships right to your door and all of the materials for the activities are included IN the kit. Simply choose an activity per day. Do as many or as few as you want. You can do them in any order. Easy. Convenient. Portable. We take parents and young children through the steps of creating interest, questioning, discovering, reading, sharing, and making connections. Our goal is to help parents know how to prepare their Preschooler or Kindergartener for school during the summer months. We will soon have kits for grades K-1 too. By fall, we’ll have kits for grades 2-3 and 3-4. We are excited to be able to help parents motivate their children in fun, meaningful ways that truly build lifelong skills and build special relationships between parent and child, by reading together.  

Visit us at www.EngagewiththePage.com

The Weight of the Nation

Dr. Donnelly wanted to share a great video on HBO that is addressing obesity in the Nation. You do not have to own HBO to watch just click on THIS LINK.  There are four different series you can watch. We encourage you to watch number three "Children in Crisis". Below you can read a little about this "Weight of the Nation" and click on the bottom of the page to go right to the series on children.  This is a great resource and we would love to hear what you think?

Bringing together the nation’s leading research institutions, THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION is a presentation of HBO and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and in partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and Kaiser Permanente.
The centerpiece of THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION campaign is the four-part documentary series, each featuring case studies, interviews with our nation’s leading experts, and individuals and their families struggling with obesity. The first film, CONSEQUENCES, examines the scope of the obesity epidemic and explores the serious health consequences of being overweight or obese. The second, CHOICES, offers viewers the skinny on fat, revealing what science has shown about how to lose weight, maintain weight loss and prevent weight gain. The third, CHILDREN IN CRISIS, documents the damage obesity is doing to our nation’s children. Through individual stories, this film describes how the strong forces at work in our society are causing children to consume too many calories and expend too little energy; tackling subjects from school lunches to the decline of physical education, the demise of school recess and the marketing of unhealthy food to children. The fourth film, CHALLENGES, examines the major driving forces causing the obesity epidemic, including agriculture, economics, evolutionary biology, food marketing, racial and socioeconomic disparities, physical inactivity, American food culture, and the strong influence of the food and beverage industry.

 

Childhood obesity is much more than a cosmetic concern. The health consequences of childhood obesity include greater risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma and other serious illnesses. The combination of these health effects and the dramatic increase in childhood obesity rates over the past three decades causes some experts to fear this may be the first generation of American children who will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.Strategies like cutting out TV and sugar-sweetened drinks may help reduce a child’s weight or prevent future weight gain, but not always for the reasons we expect. There is a link between TV watching and overweight and obesity among children. While the act of watching TV - being sedentary and possibly eating snacks while taking in a favorite show - is part of the problem, experts are now looking at what kids watch as well. There is a growing debate over the effects of food marketing on the childhood obesity epidemic and what should be done about it.For parents of obese children, responsible parenting means more than tackling health challenges head on. It also means doing the hard work of finding supportive, healthy communities that will instill long-term habits that promote healthy living. And it means knowing that some day, every child will be an adult who deserves to know that their parents did all they could to help them grow up healthy and happy. Changes to school lunches are one way to make a major dent in the childhood obesity epidemic. But in too many schools across the country, the lunches being served don’t meet all of the federal government’s guidelines for nutrition. Moreover, the obstacles to changing our National School Lunch Program and the food served in cafeterias across the country are formidable.Consuming sugar-sweetened beverages, including juice drinks, is also associated with obesity and accounts for more added sugar in our children’s daily diet than any other food. Replacing sports drinks, soda and other sugary drinks and limiting your intake of 100% fruit juice are effective straightforward ways to start the journey to healthier behaviors and lower body fat for kids and adults.Beyond proper diet, kids need physical activity to lead a healthy lifestyle. With the rise of video games and the decline of physical education in schools, being active isn’t as easy or common for today’s kids. Schools can become the centerpiece of public efforts to ensure that kids participate in physical activity and develop healthier lifestyles that can last a lifetime. And it makes perfect sense for them to do so: not only will they be nurturing the growth and development of the whole child, but research links physical activity with improved learning capacity. “If they’re not bouncing up and down in gym, they’re going to be bouncing off the walls in class,” says the director of the CDC, Dr. Thomas Frieden. Unfortunately, P.E. has become a low priority in some of our nation’s schools.The good news is that there are resources available for concerned parents who want to help their kids. With hard work, we can improve the health of our children. The bad news is that there are many barriers to achieving these goals and, unfortunately, a lot of parents don’t yet recognize the seriousness of obesity-related health issues and the help their children need to overcome the obstacles in their environment. Watch Now

**info from  http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/

We love our baby names!

We love to see your newborns! It is so much fun to see a baby's little personality and to see what you have named these new little ones. The Social Security Administration released its top 1,000 baby name list for 2011 on Monday morning. To read the full list click HERE.
Just for fun we thought we would share and ask....where does your child's name stand?....
BOYS
1. Jacob
2. Mason
3. William
4. Jayden
5. Noah
6. Michael
7. Ethan
8. Alexander
9. Aiden
10. Daniel
GIRLS
1. Sophia
2. Isabella
3. Emma
4. Olivia
5. Ava
6. Emily
7. Abigail
8. Madison
9. Mia
10. Chloe

Here is the social security administration's list of top trenders:
BOYS
1. Brantley
2. Iker
3. Maximiliano
4. Zaiden
5. Kamden
6. Barrett
7. Archer
8. Declan
9. Atticus
10. Nico
GIRLS
1. Briella
2. Angelique
3. Aria
4. Mila
5. Elsie
6. Nylah
7. Raelynn
8. Brynlee
9. Olive
10. June

**info from social security administration