Paul Scott exposes the child marketing industry’s unethical practices and harmful effects in his outstanding article in Children’s Health.

He warns parents that child marketing is everywhere, not just in the 30 second TV ads that we typically think of as marketing. The child marketing industry seeks to influence your children every chance it gets. The results are a quiet disaster. From the internet to cell phones, corporate brands are using every tool in the book to move your child “from brand awareness to investigation, from investigation to selection, to repeat purchase, to loyalty and ultimately to advocacy.”

If you’ve ever heard your child ask you for a brand, he or she has become that brand’s advocate and is now working for that company as part of its sales force. Seizing children’s brains is like shooting fish in a barrel it turns out.

Research has shown that children younger than 7 or 8 are unable to tell whether something or someone is trying to persuade them to do something. That, coupled with with proven damage that marketing to children causes, is why an organization no less prestigious than the American Psychological Association considers advertising to children under 7 to be unethical. In fact, it is illegal in Norway and Sweden and many other countries severely restrict it like we restrict cigarette and alcohol advertising.

Scott’s article lists the many harmful effects marketing has on children from higher body mass index to lack of creativity, and points out that the increasing sexualization of marketing to girls is particularly harmful. The American Psychological Association found “ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects on cognitive function, physical and mental health and healthy sexual development.”

These findings would not be so scary if our country’s children ages 8-18 did not spend 44.5 hours a week exposed to media and marketing. What can you do to fight this flood? Scott has some answers in his Princess Diatribes.

He also recommends toys that stimulate a child’s imagination and intellect. Hint: no branded toy can. Try PlanToys, Magna-Tiles, Gustafer Yellowgold, Back to Basics Toys, Thames & Kosmos, and TRUCE Toy Action Guide.

The University of Michigan study found that TV causes an increased likelihood of children don’t pay as much attention in school, perform worse in math, eat more junk food, live a more sedentary life, are bullied more and have more problems adjusting at school.

The study has confirmed what smaller, less stringent studies have hinted at in the past. The most worrisome finding is that the problems caused by TV persisted even after the age of 7 in the children studied.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends less than two hours of TV per day.

One such death was that of 13-month-old Aiden Truett who stopped eating and began vomiting. Doctors attributed the symptoms to a viral upper respiratory infection, but were forced to re-evaluate after treatment only led to worsening symptoms.

X-rays revealed the baby had swallowed a button battery, which was quickly removed surgically. Two days later, however, the baby started coughing blood and soon died.

Before doctors could remove the small battery, it had already burned a hole in the baby’s esophagus and damaged his heart. In the past, such batteries were not strong enough to cause such massive damage, but today’s batteries are supercharged for their small sizes and have caused a sevenfold increase in serious injuries and death since 1985.

Deaths are still very rare, fewer than 10 since 2004, but 3,500 button battery ingestions occur annually and today’s stronger batteries are causing more serious injuries. Every organ that encounters a button battery is a risk.

Vocal chords have been damaged, leaving children suffering from a lifelong whisper. Digestive tract injuries have caused children to undergo multiple surgeries and require feeding tubes. Children are not the only population at risk for these injuries. Our elderly have mistaken the buttons for candy and medication.

The worst offenders are batteries that begin with the number 20. They measure 20 millimeters and are the strongest of today’s tiny power plants. Batteries numbered 2032, 2025, and 2016 cause more than 90 percent of serious injury.

In 60 percent of child injuries, the child has removed the batter from an electronic device, not found it loose. Store your battery powered devices in a safe place.

Read the full article here.

Staying off busy roads is not enough. More than half the 135 children who die in bike-related car accidents are killed on minor roads or in residential areas. They don’t have to – bike helmets reduce the risk of severe brain injury by 88 percent.

Make sure you set a good example for your child. You are a role model whether you like it or not. Your approach cannot be “do as I say, not as I do.” Children are always watching you for what is acceptable behavior.

Use hand signals in traffic and always ride responsibly. Ride on the right side of the road with traffic. Don’t let your child be one of the 75 to 85 percent of children who ride bikes without helmets. Show them that using a helmet is the only way to bicycle.

Even though you may be riding responsibly, sometimes injuries occur due to the fault of others. Helmets significantly reduce your risk of needing a Daytona Beach personal injury lawyer.

They can’t tell us what’s wrong so our fears are left unchecked. To make matters worse, symptoms that we would easily recognize in older children and adults are often different in babies.

Here’s your chance to learn about the most common medical conditions that are difficult to spot in children younger than 2, and help your pediatrician make the right diagnosis.

Type I Diabetes

The early signs of type I diabetes often mimic symptoms of common illnesses like the flu or can even be mistaken for healthy, thriving behavior. Parents are likely to consider increased thirst and appetite a great sign that healthy growth is proceeding as it should. More frequent urination can also be chalked up to a side effect of that “growth spurt.”

Children with type I diabetes are often tired, but then again, most babies are. And what about the fruity-smelling breath that’s another sign? Parents are likely to delight in that. Lastly, your child will not be able to alert you to the blurring of her eyesight.

The best way to diagnose type I diabetes may be the proactive step of requesting a blood sugar or urine sugar test before your suspicions are aroused. Even if your baby begins showing more serious signs of type I diabetes, they can often be misdiagnosed with pneumonia or gastroenteritis leaving the diabetes untreated which can cascade out of control leaving your baby in the intensive care unit.

Keep an eye out for the early warning signs and note any changes in your baby’s behavior. Type I diabetes does not run in families so you can not use that as a predictor. Most of the time, no known relative has the disease.

Head Injuries

If you see your baby fall and then later develop vomiting, that’s an undeniable sign of a brain trauma which needs medical attention. New research reveals most children with head trauma should not receive an immediate CAT scan but should be watched closely. However, head injuries accompanied by vomiting should at least be looked at by a doctor.

But what if you don’t see your baby hit her head? What if it happened while a caregiver was watching her while you were at work and you were not notified? Vomiting can be quite normal for young children. What you want to look for are changes in your baby’s pupils, lethargy, sensitivity to light, increased emotional displays, confusion and whether or not your baby continues to move normally.

No one knows your baby better than you, if you suspect she’s just not herself and displaying a combination of the above symptoms, tip your doctor off that a head injury should be considered.

Epilepsy

Think epilepsy is a no-brainer diagnosis? Think again. In babies, symptoms are different. A common type of seizure in young children involves nothing more than staring.

It can appear as if your baby is just zoning out. The key factor is whether or not you are able to snap your baby out of it. If you can snap your fingers and she responds, then that is normal.

However, if nothing distracts her from the staring behavior, a neurological examination is likely a good idea. If you can, video tape the staring behavior so your doctor can have as much information as possible with which to make the diagnosis. Use a phone video camera if necessary, even a short video can help immensely.

Pertussis (Whooping Cough)

Kids with pertussis cough so hard they can vomit. However, the characteristic whooping sound is rare in babies younger than 6-months-old which makes their symptoms look very much like those of pneumonia, asthma, croup or a viral upper-respiratory infection.

To make matters worse, babies with pertussis may not even cough at all and babies younger than 6 months are the most at risk of serious complications from pertussis.

Signs of serious pertussis are enough to send any parent to the emergency room, but it does not have to get that far. The best way to protect your baby from pertussis is for you and all other caregivers to get a booster vaccination.

To make matters worse for medical malpractice plaintiffs, of those 27-36 percent of courthouse winners, fewer that half receive any money at all. So only 13.5-18 percent of medical malpractice victims who win their case in court receive any money to compensate them for their medical bills and other damages. That I why I will never guarantee that I can recover money to help pay a medical malpractice victim’s medical bills.

Medical malpractice cases are some of the toughest around. That’s why we accept very few of them for representation. They are so expensive to litigate that it is not cost-effective for victims to bring lawsuits in all but the most serious cases. I’ve seen many cases with legitimate, substantial injuries caused by negligence that I decided not to accept because I did not think that I could recover enough money to cover the costs of bringing the case. I always feel badly explaining to people that I’m not saying their injury is trivial or small (it never is to them) but that it is just not catastrophic enough to warrant filing suit in this harsh medical malpractice climate.

Every so often though, we do accept a medical malpractice case. The only strategy in a medical malpractice suit (and most lawsuits for that matter) that affords a victim with any degree of control over the outcome is to settle out of court before trial. If you go to trial, you are submitting your fate to a group of strangers whose only qualification to render judgment on your case is that they hold driver’s licenses.

Whether a malpractice case settles or goes to trial, it is tough road to hoe. Make sure you work with an attorney you trust to handle your case.

In essence, toddler’s brains are only about as developed as the brains of our ancestors the cavemen were. When adults throw tantrums, we refer to it as “going ape” for similar reasons. When adults lose our temper, the left side of our brains literally shut down and we revert to emotional and not logical beings.

However, toddlers are constantly going prehistoric on us as parents and we would be better off communicating with them in a way they can recognize and respond to. So instead of using a soothing voice to tell a toddler to calm down, researchers suggest we communicate to their right brains, their emotional caveman brains.

The way we do that is to repeat short phrases while slightly mirroring their emotional state. Now this gets really interesting because research and experience shows that adults instinctively do this already when children are happy.

For example, if a child is happy about learning a new word or doing something else good, adults often say something like, “Yes, yes, yes, wow, great job, great job,” in an excited tone of voice that mirrors the child’s mood. However, we usually do the opposite when children misbehave. We use soothing tones and give them reasons why they shouldn’t behave that way.

Researchers suggest we would receive much better outcomes if we communicated to children’s right brains when they’re misbehaving.

Researchers also point out that adults do this with other adults sometimes which makes sense because we too become cavemen when we’re angry because our left brain shuts down. If you’ve ever found yourself using a charged tone of voice to say something like, “sorry, sorry, sorry, I can explain myself, but I’m sorry,” that is effective communication with the right brain. It’s mirroring the other’s emotional state while repeating short phrases.

Try it sometime with your toddler and see if they don’t respond better.

When using and sharing our roadways, whether it be by school bus, car, bicycle, foot, or whether it be in Orlando, Daytona Beach or Jacksonville, a few simple precautions will go a long way toward making this school year a safe one.

By Bus
Research shows that school bus travel is significantly safer than traveling by car or motorcycle. In fact, it is 16 times safer. Although school buses are quite a bit safer than autos, accidents do happen. More often than not, school bus related child injuries occur outside the bus, not while riding in the bus.

Parents and children should be more concerned with behaving safely when boarding or leaving the bus than with the possibility of a bus crash. At the time children are entering and exiting the bus, they can be hit by the bus itself or other vehicles.

Ideally parents should supervise their children as they send them off to school. If that is not possible for you, teach your kids just a few simple precautions:

• Look to the left, then to the right, and then to the left once more if you have to cross the street.
• Never stick your arms or head out of the window.
• Do not get off the bus before it stops moving completely
• When exiting the bus: take two large steps away from it. Then, if you have to walk in front of it, walk ahead at least three meters (10 giant steps). The driver must be able to see you.
• If you drop something that rolls near or under the bus, never attempt to retrieve it without the driver’s permission.

By Car
Rules for dropping off and picking up your children at school exist for safety and orderliness. While traffic congestion may be frustrating, do not get “creative” in the school zone. Respect speed limits, and drop-off and pick-up areas.

By Bicycle
Don’t ride your bike to school until you’re at least 9 years old and have enough experience to be able to look ahead and behind you without swerving.

• Note that when you look behind you while riding a bike, you will likely swerve to the direction in which you turned your head. Learn how to compensate for this tendency in places where there is no traffic before riding in traffic.
• Signal when you intend to turn by pointing to the direction you intend to turn.
• Always wear a helmet.

By Foot
If you’re walking to school, walk with a parent or friend.

• Never accept rides from strangers.
• Be aware of your surroundings. If you’re talking to a friend or parent on the way, look around occasionally to see what’s going on around you. At the least, it will keep you from walking into a pole, bumping your head and looking silly.
• Use sidewalks when available and cross with the light at crosswalks. Remember to look to the left, the right and then left again before crossing the street.
• Make sure drivers see you before you cross.

Children of that age are more susceptible to poisoning and often do not understand the dangers such substances present. Otherwise harmless substances found in the home can cause young children serious injury.

Medications were found to be the most common cause of accidental child poisoning. Almost half of all child injuries from poisoning involved either prescription or non-prescription medication. Those types of childhood poisoning occurred mostly in two situations: those involving parents administering an incorrect dosage and those involving unsupervised children ingesting incorrect medication or too much medication.

Household cleaning products and pesticides were the second leading cause of childhood poisoning injuries. They accounted for 21 percent of all child poisoning injuries. Other child poisoning causes include cosmetics, vitamins, and dietary supplements.

In this country, 71,000 children are injured each year from medication related poisonings alone. That included prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The total number of annual child poisonings is around 140,000.

This is a staggering number when you consider how simple it is to prevent accidental child poisoning. Simply store your medications and household chemicals out of your children’s reach. Take the short amount of time necessary to read and understand medication directions.

Never store your medicine in purses, bags, drawers, on counter-tops or other places kids can get to them. If you can’t store your household chemicals high enough to be out of the reach of children, use child locks on those cabinets.

Keep household chemicals in their original containers, and never near food so they are not confused with food. Also never refer to medications as “candy” to your children or say they taste like candy. This will only encourage them to overdose if they gain unsupervised access to them.

Meynhart doctored his financial records and never gave the boy the money he was awarded in a 2006 lawsuit. Authorities do not know where the money is at this time.

The Florida Bar revoked Meynhart’s license to practice law in March. He is currently in jail with a $15,000 bail.

For the most part, lawyers are ethical, honest and trustworthy. However, there are always the rotten few who behave outrageously and attract a lot of media attention. There are ways to protect yourself from being the victim of an unethical lawyer. Doing just a little bit of lawyer shopping before you consult with an attorney can go a long way.

The Florida Child Injury Lawyer and personal injury law firm Zimmet & Quarles are sick of hearing about unethical lawyers just as much as you are so we’ve authored two books to help you navigate the unfamiliar world of lawsuits and lawyers.

As I wrote, most lawyers are ethical, honest and trustworthy and most will tell you that in their advertisements. However, that’s all they’ll tell you. None of the lawyer advertising I’ve seen gives any helpful information about how to decide which lawyer is the one best suited for your case.

If you or a loved one have been injured, do yourself a favor. Before you sign any forms, before you talk to an adjuster, before you hire a lawyer, get our free books that reveal how to decide which lawyer is right for you. Get them free at zqlawyers.com. we’re confident you won’t be disapointed.