The other day Fiona was found riffling through the medicines in our house. I didn't think she could get into any of it... Child proof containers right???? Well seconds later she had eaten and swallowed a cherry flavored Unisom... which is a sleeping pill. My initial thought was... "maybe she will take a long nap today?" Chuck did not share this thought and was quite upset. He took Fiona into the bathroom explained that she just put something poison in her belly and told her she needed to throw up. I was a little worried at what the reaction of a two year old would be to a finger in her throat to induce vomiting. Yet after the fact she exclaimed "All better" and resumed her usual activities... and took a normal length nap.
This little incident which now makes four phone calls to poison control in less than two years got us thinking about what we have in our house. We made the decision to drastically clean out the medications and pills from our house. I was surprised at how much stuff I had that was really potentially harmful to her and NOT hard to open. Also much of it was expired and needed to be thrown out anyhow.
Fiona sat and watched as I opened all the bottles and poured out the brightly colored contents. She was convinced that I was getting rid of a candy stash and cried to be able to eat medicine. She even picked up an empty pill bottle and carried it around like a dolly for awhile. I kept trying to explain that medicine is not candy... but how can you convince a kid of that when pills taste sweet and are bright and colorful. I understand that sugar and sweet coatings are given to pills to make them easy to swallow... but I think it makes it too easy for kids to be confused and ingest things that are poison to their little bodies.
In nature poisonous things are bitter tasting and foul... a built in protection system to prevent us from ingesting harmful things. I think pills should not be flavored and brightly colored and coated to serve as a warning to kids taste buds. But then again my kid sometimes licks the bottom of shoes...
With that said, for us we feel the best medicine is *no medicine!
*We are now using more essential oils, flower essences, herbs, and whole food vitamins to deal with the physical ailments of life.
2 comments:
Tacy, i just noticed the "stuff i make" section. PERFECT! Just yesterday i was thinking that i wanted to ask if you'd make me another beanie for Elsie since her head is huge and her purple one doesn't fit her at all anymore. It's a little chilly in the mornings when we go on walks so a beanie is a must. Of course i would pay you. Are you up to the challenge anytime soon?
We need to form a "posion control hotline support group" you and I do. Once James got into a drawer and sucked down some lancane -- anti-itch stuff. I didn't know how much he'd ingested. We spent some time in the ER for that one. Thankfully, he didn't turn blue or anything. But it made me clean out closets and drawers and everything us way up high and out of the way now.
Then this one -- oh this one was just the other nite. There was this white bead type stuff all over the floor -- that looked like it had been chewed. And James thinks it's funny to "fake chew"...and he was not telling us anything. I had just opened up a new box of shoes for him and I just thought he'd gotten ahold of a silica package they put in those new shoes and chewed it. Thank you internet -- silica not poison, but still scary. Anyway, we still kept finding white stuff all over the floor....and in his pant cuff. Oh, never mind, his diaper split open and was spilling the contents all over the house, and he just didn't say anything.
These are the days of our lives.
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