Most of us, including me, are not always health food angels. However, a family who is a regular customer at a fast food restaurant may simply not know how to break the habit. For those who still need to get those healthy eating New Year’s resolutions rolling, our February podcast, “Helping the Overweight Child,” gave the 5-4-3-2-1-0 rules for healthy eating.  This post gives more hints:

BMI, or Body Mass Index (weight in kg divided by height in meters squared) is a number which indicates whether your child’s weight is normal for his or her height and age. Normal weight school aged kids DO look a bit scrawny.Children’s bellies should NOT hang over their pants. On the other hand, normal weight toddlers do look a bit pudgy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a nice BMI calculator. 

Snacks aren’t needed at sports games which last only an hour. Supply water bottles and forget the snack.

Don’t feed your younger child snacks to keep him occupied during an older sibling’s event. Bring books, paper and crayons, a doll, or a matchbox car instead.

 Make a stack of peanut butter and jelly or cheese sandwiches and keep them wrapped, ready to go, in the fridge. Keep some washed apple slices or carrot sticks along side the sandwiches and this stash can be your “fast food” at those times you need to feed your family “on the run”. 

 Don’t give your children a junky snack in order to carry them over until dinner. If your kids come home from school STARVING!!, give them a REAL dinner, and then give them a fruit or vegetable when the entire family later sits down.

holiday is one day, Halloween is October 31^st. ^. Why eat the candy for days and weeks afterwards?

Don’t keep junk food in your home. This will avoid arguments about what to eat.

Have your children ask you if they can have something to eat, rather than allowing “free access” to your pantry/refrigerator. That allows you decide if it is too close to mealtime to have a snack (remember from the Picky Eaters blog post,“hunger is the best sauce”) and will allow you to choose an appropriate snack and portion size. If kids inherently knew healthy choices and portion sizes, they wouldn’t need parents! Also this allows you to determine if the child is truly hungry, bored, or attention seeking. 

Now back to the the fast food establishment I find myself in with my family. “Maybe this restaurant chain should offer a Two Peds in a Pod kid’s lunch box,” I mused as my family finished up their greasy, salty meal. Everyone’s curiosity was piqued. My husband and I began to hypothesize what kind of food would be inside a Two Peds box.

“What do you think?” I asked the kids.

“We’re actually more interested in what kind of prize would you would offer,” they said.

Gotta love my regular customers.

Naline Lai, MD and Julie Kardos, MD

©2010 Two Peds in a Pod®

The newest trend in kidville- trading rubber bands in various shapes. The kids wear the bands like bracelets and strut around with the colorful bands jutting out in all directions from their arms and wrists. The elementary school crowd is fascinated by them.  Teachers, who find them a distraction, are not as enamored. Somewhere there is one teacher today who is particularly appalled. During a check up, a nine year old told me today that a classmate was sent to the nurse’s office- the reason? The bands were on so tight that they were cutting off circulation to the classmate’s arm. 

Always something. 

Naline Lai, MD

© 2010 Two Peds in a Pod

“Help, Mommy, Daddy, I wet the bed!”

As you wash yet another set of bed sheets and wet pajama bottoms, you may be wondering WHEN your child will stay dry at night and WHY your child still wets the bed when his friends, or worse yet, his younger siblings, are dry. This post addresses primary bedwetting (doctors call this “primary nocturnal enuresis”), kids who have NEVER been dry at night. Children who have had months or years of dry nights and then start bedwetting consistently should go see their pediatrician to rule out medical causes of new bedwetting.

Here are a few things parents of bed-wetters should know.

Most children master staying dry during the day BEFORE staying dry during the night. Only a small number of children actually wake up dry in the morning before they start potty training. Daytime dryness is under your child’s cognitive control. Night time dryness is not learned or controlled by your child’s rational brain, but rather is a function of your child’s bladder being mature enough to send a WAKE UP!! signal to your child. Quick hint here: nightmares can result from a full bladder. As you comfort your child from a bad dream, don’t forget to take him to the bathroom.

About 80 percent of children are dry overnight by age four. They sleep through the night and wake up dry or they wake up once to urinate in the bathroom and go back to bed. What about the other 20%? Each year after age four years, about 10% of kids who are wet at night become dry without any intervention. Genetics play a big role in this. If one parent was a bedwetter until age 7, for example, then the child has a 35% chance of bedwetting until this age. If both parents wet the bed until school age, then their child has at least an 80% chance of being just like Mom and Dad.

However, some kids just wet the bed even though their parents were dry at an early age. Regardless, parents can help.

Do NOT punish your child for wetting the bed. It truly isn’t his fault.

It is reasonable to limit fluid intake in the few hours before bed but do allow your child to drink water if thirsty or with teeth brushing.

By all means let your child wear training pants at night or at least put some form of water repellent mattress protector on your child’s bed. These are not “crutches” or “enablers” but rather save you from having to wash sheets and mattresses.

Not all kids are actually upset about bedwetting, but they can become very upset if parents let them feel that way. Reassure your child that someday “the pee pee will wake you up to go potty in the night” just like it tells your child to go to the bathroom during the day.

Older kids might become self-conscious, and their self-esteem gets impacted by their bedwetting.  Typically this happens between the ages of 8 to 10 years,  when sleep-overs and camp gain popularity.

Ways to help your child approach potentially awkward situations include:

• Have the sleep-over at your house and have our child’s absorbent training pants already in the bed hidden under the covers. Your child can put them on after “lights out.”
• Tell your child that he does not have to share the reason for not wanting to sleep away from home.
• Alternatively, he can tell his friends that YOU, the mean parent, will not allow him to attend sleepovers yet.
• If your child is motivated to try to become dry overnight, you can try a bed wetting alarm system. These systems work well over a period of several months. With alarms, both parents and children have to be active participants.

Additionally, there is one medical option.

Talk to your child’s health care provider about medicine called DDAVP that can give a “quick fix.” The medication can keep your child dry on the night he takes the medicine. The medicine comes in pill form. Your child could either take it only for sleepovers or can take it for a few months at a time if bedwetting compromises his self-esteem. Note that even after months of dry nights on medicine, your child will likely bed wet if he stops taking the medicine. However, there is also a chance that nature will have taken over and by the time the medication is stopped, your child will have reached the age that his body was programmed to stay dry at night.

Of course, your child’s health care provider can help ensure that your child merely has an immature bladder-to-brain messaging system and not any other cause of his bed-wetting. Your doctor can also help evaluate if your child’s self esteem is affected by his bedwetting.

While not the most glamorous part of the parenting game, washing up after a bedwetting child and keeping a positive attitude for him are very important. The next time you will play this supportive role is when you become grandparents and your former bedwetter calls you for advice about his own bedwetting child.

Julie Kardos, MD and Naline Lai, MD
©2010 Two Peds in a Pod

A common question that many parents ask us in the office is “How can I help my overweight child?”

Our newest podcast provides six simple rules for healthy eating. Listen in to find out the “5-4-3-2-1-0” rules of what to feed your children, how to portion their foods, and how to change their behavior to help them lose excess pounds and maintain a healthy weight.

(If the podcast is not embedded in your RSS reader page,visit the www.TwoPedsInAPod.com home page directly.)

Julie Kardos, MD and Naline Lai, MD

©2010 Two Peds in a Pod

Your nine-year-old sweetie pie still has baby fat on her cheeks and the changes of puberty have barely started, yet you find yourself in the aisles of a pharmacy scratching your head over the best starter deodorant. Yes, the dreaded body odor has started. Much to the consternation of parents in my office, adult-like body odor appears before periods and voice changes.

What to do about stinky armpits in tweens? Antiperspirants can be very irritating to skin. For a first deodorant, chose something like Tom’s of Maine- natural care, which does not contain antiperspirants. For some kids, a cornstarch powder works well. 

For stinky feet, make sure the kids wash with soap daily-this can be tough for a kid who is just learning how to balance in the shower.

The bacteria which causes athlete’s feet can lead to an unpleasant odor. Add a half-cup of vinegar to a basin of water and soak the feet once a day to kill the bacteria.

Keep their feet well moisturized with lotion. Contrary to popular belief, the more dry and flaky the feet, the more pungent they are.

Yes, those UGGs are fashionable, and the UGG care kit comes with an anti-stink spray; however, sheepskin and warm feet in an enclosed boot leads to stinky feet.  I know it’s counter UGG culture, but remind your kids to wear socks with their shoes.  In general change socks often. Kids tend to go from school to a sporting event and into bed with the same socks.

Even with these hints, if your child’s body odor remains strong, reassure your child that nobody, especially the kid he has a crush on, really notices. Besides, if you have a stinky kid, at least you’ll never lose him in the dark.

Naline Lai, MD
© 2010 Two Peds in a Pod

Acetaminophen, brand name Tylenol, has been in the news recently, and parents are asking me if it is safe.

This medication, used as a pain reliever and as a fever reducer, is safe to give to babies older than two months, but you must be very careful about the dose that you give. Medicine doses are based on the weight, not the age, of a child. So when checking the label on the bottle that tells how much acetaminophen to give, look at the weight recommendations if there is a discrepancy between your child’s weight and age. If you are not sure, then ask your child’s health care provider. I cannot stress proper dosing enough because of how dangerous an overdose can be.

 Here are some facts you need to know in order to avoid over-dosing your child with Tylenol:

1)      Always measure the medicine in the dropper or cup provided by the manufacturer of that particular medicine bottle.

2)      Be aware that Tylenol infant drops are more concentrated than the children’s suspension liquid. This means that if you were to pour out equal amounts of infant drops and children’s suspension, the amount of drug is actually HIGHER in the measurement of infant drops than in the same measurement of children’s suspension. For example, one full infant dropper of Infant Tylenol Drops, measured to the 0.8ml line of the dropper, is 80mg of Tylenol. The same 0.8ml of Children’s Tylenol Suspension Liquid is only 25mg.

Another way to look at this medicine math: if you intended to give 80mg = 2.5ml = 1/2 teaspoon of Children’s Tylenol Suspension Liquid   but you actually gave your child 2.5ml = ½ teaspoon of Infant Tylenol instead of Children’s Tylenol, you would be giving them over 240 mg of Tylenol, which is THREE TIMES the amount that you wanted to give. Again, use the dropper provided to give Infant Tylenol drops and use the cup provided when dosing the Children’s Tylenol Suspension Liquid.

3)      Note that other medications have acetaminophen (Tylenol) in them. I advise my patients’ parents to avoid combination cold and flu medicines for two reasons. First, there is little evidence that shows that they actually provide symptom relief. Second, from a safety perspective, parents can accidentally overdose their child with acetaminophen because many contain acetaminophen in them. For example, as of this writing, the following medications all contain acetaminophen as stated in the ingredient list:

Benadryl  Allergy and Cold Tablets, Sudafed PE nighttime Cold Maximum Strength Tablets, Theraflu Nighttime Severe Cold and Cough Powder, Tylenol Plus Children’s Cold and Allergy Suspension, Tylenol Sore throat Nighttime liquid, Tylenol Chest Congestion Liquid, and Nyquil.

4)      Be aware that “APAP” in the ingredient list means acetaminophen.

Tylenol overdoses can be fatal by causing liver failure. If your child has a chronic liver disease, it is likely that she should avoid Tylenol altogether.

Because of the risk of overdose, I also avoid advising my patients to “alternate Tylenol (acetaminophen) with Motrin (ibuprofen).” I discourage this practice because I am afraid of parents forgetting which medicine they gave last and possibly over-dosing by mistake. Tylenol is meant to be dosed every 4 to 6 hours unless otherwise specified on the label or by your child’s health care provider. 

If you ever have questions about possible overdose, call the national US Poison Control Center at 1-800-222-1222.

Julie Kardos, MD
©2009 Two Peds in a Pod

Addendum 10/11/2011: The manufacturers of Tylenol (acetaminophen) responded to the hazard of parents and caregivers accidentally giving the wrong dose of infant drops ( see point #2 above) and stopped making the “concentrated infant drops.” Instead, they now manufacture the “infant drops” and “children’s liquid” using the same concentration as each other. Continue to use the measuring dropper or cup provided with the medication for proper measuring.

A friend of mine who has no children commented to me that many people tell him, “You just can’t know happiness until you have children of your own.” However, I know several adults who are very happy people and who have made a conscious decision to not have children. So I would actually amend the above adage to: “You just can’t know WORRY until you have children of your own.”

Especially in winter, many illnesses circulate. All these sick kids make for many worried parents. Some questions that I answer many times a day in the office are: “Okay, Doc, you just told me that my child is handling her illness right now, but how will I know if she is getting worse? When do I need to worry?”

Here is what I tell my patients’ parents:

First and foremost, trust your parent instincts that something is wrong.

Think about these THREE MAIN SYSTEMS: breathing, thinking, and drinking/peeing.

Breathing:

Normally, breathing is easy to do. It is so easy, in fact, that if you take off your child’s shirt and watch her breathe, it can be hard to see that she is breathing. You should try this while your child is healthy. Normal breathing does not involve effort. It does not involve the chest muscles.

If your child has pneumonia, bad asthma, bronchitis, or any other condition that causes respiratory distress, breathing becomes hard. It becomes faster than baseline. It involves chest muscles moving so it looks like ribs are sticking out with every breath. The chest itself moves a lot. Kids’ bellies may also move in and out. Nostrils flare in attempt to get more oxygen. Sometimes kids make a grunting sound at the end of each breath because they are having difficulty pushing the air out of their lungs before taking another breath in. Also, instead of a normal pink color, your child’s lips can have a blue or pale color. Pink is good, blue or pale is bad. Children old enough to talk may actually have difficulty talking because they are short of breath. Any of the above signs tell you that your child needs medical attention.

Thinking:

This refers to mental or emotional state. Normally, children recognize their parents and are comforted by their presence. They are easy to console by being held, rocked, massaged, etc. They know where they are, and they make sense when they talk.

Change in mental state, whether it comes from lack of oxygen/shortness of breath, pain, or severe infection, results in a child who is inconsolable. She may not recognize her parents or know where she is. Instead of calming, she may scream louder when rocked. She may seem disoriented or just too lethargic/difficult to arouse. Being very combative can also be a sign of not getting enough oxygen. In a baby, extreme pain can cause all these signs as well.

Drinking/peeing:

While this varies somewhat depending on the age of the child, most kids urinate every 3-6 hours or so. Young babies may urinate more frequently than this and some older kids urinate perhaps 2-3 times daily. You should know your child’s baseline. Normal urine reflects a normal state of hydration. If you don’t drink enough, you will urinate less.

If your child has fever, coughing, vomiting, or diarrhea, she will use up fluid in her body faster than her baseline. In order to compensate, she needs to drink more than her baseline amount of liquid to urinate normally. A child will refuse to drink because of severe pain, shortness of breath, or change in mental state, and may go for hours without urinating. This is a problem that needs medical attention. Occasionally a child will urinate much more than usual and this can also be a problem (this can be a sign of new diabetes as well as other problems). Basically any change from baseline urine output is a problem.

A note about fever: any infant 8 weeks of age or younger with fever of 100.4 F or higher, measured rectally, requires immediate medical attention, even if all other systems are good. Babies this young can have fever before any other signs of serious illness such as meningitis, pneumonia, blood infections, etc. and they can fool us by initially appearing well.

In older babies and children, fever is defined as 101 F or higher. Some kids can look quite well even at 104 and others can look quite ill at 101. Fever is a sign that your body’s immune system is working to fight off illness. In addition to fever, it is important to look at breathing, thinking, and hydration state because this will help you determine how quickly your child needs medical attention. A child with a mild runny nose and fever of 103 who can play still play a game with you while drinking her apple juice is less ill than a child with a 101 fever who doesn’t recognize her parents.

To summarize, any deviation from normal breathing, thinking, or drinking/urinating (peeing) is a problem that needs medical attention, even if no fever is present. In addition, any change in the wrong direction (getting worse instead of getting better) is a problem that needs medical attention.

Finally, all parents have PARENT INSTINCT. Trust yourself. Ultimately, if you are wondering if you should seek medical advice, just do it. If parents could just worry every problem away, no one would ever be sick.

Julie Kardos, MD with Naline Lai, MD
© 2009 Two Peds in a Pod