Female: It's a proud day when your baby learns to crawl but with that excitement comes caution. Objects you haven’t thought twice about may become choking hazards for the inquisitive child. In fact, choking is the most common cause of injury related death in children under one year of age.
Female: Their anatomy is such that they have a smaller airway that can be easily plugged by common items in the house like marbles, balls, coins, balloons.
Female: Toys may also present a problem. The child safety protection act passed in 1995 requires manufacturers to put labels on all toys that might present a choking hazard to children three years old or younger. So look for the label. What else can a parent do to avoid choking hazards?
Female: They’re pretty tall in comparison and they might be looking at a part of our world in the home that we don’t typically see. So, it's a good idea to get down on your knees at their eye level and look around what are they looking at, what could they get into.
Female: Of course even if you are able to keep small objects out of your child’s reach, food itself can present a danger. Children generally don’t learn how to grind their food between their teeth until about age four. So they may attempt to swallow bites whole. Richard Burgos found that out when he realized his son Mathew nine months old at that time was choking on a teething biscuit.
Richard: Well he had managed to—chew off the pretty sized chunk and he tried to swallow it and it wouldn’t go down. My wife was sitting at the table. I wasn’t at the table at that time, the kitchen table. She stood up started freaking out “oh my God, oh my God, I think he’s choking, I think he’s choking”.
Female: Luckily for Mathew, his father is an emergency medical technician trained in first aid for choking and CPR.
Richard: I was like I don’t know. I just reacted where I really wasn’t thinking oh my God he’s going to you know pass away or anything but it just happened very quick. So after the fact that you start to think oh my God, you know this could have been serious.
Female: The American Academy of Pediatrics has compiled a list of foods that are far more likely to choke a child than teething biscuits are. These include nuts and seeds, grapes, popcorn, raisins, chunks of meat or cheese, raw vegetables like carrots and celery, chewing gum, hard gooey or sticky candy, hotdogs and even chunks of peanut butter. The AAP recommends children under four, avoid these foods altogether. But for older children—
Female: All that we ask is that you take a moment to consider how best to serve into the child.
Female: That means cutting foods like hotdogs into bite size pieces and then cutting them again. It also means making your child eat at the table and watching him as he eats. Richard Burgos is careful to take such precautions these days.
Richard: I mean to this day we still cut his chicken and the meat and everything. We still cut it small. You know any toys would be—or stuffed animals with the eyes that might come off or something like that. You know you always got to be concerned about those.
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