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.

Right now, they’re giving away free car seat IDs. Now is your chance to be better safe than sorry. Car seat ID tags may not seam very important now, but in the event you happen to be involved in a car wreck, truck accident or other type of traffic injury, a car seat ID will provide potentially life saving information to emergency responders, not to mention family contact numbers.

All car seat IDs from My Precious Kid come with self sealing lamination and a luggage loop. To be eligible to receive one of the free IDs, you must currently be pregnant or have given birth or adopted a baby on or after August 1, 2009. If you are not eligible, the IDs are available for sale also.

In addition to this offering, the blog boasts great information like how to obtain free stuff (diapers, etc) for your baby, and insightful product reviews. I recommend a visit to all my parent readers.

Stocking hangers have become popular as a way to hang those well-loved holiday stockings without drilling holes or using other hardware in you home. These heavily weighted ornaments come in all shapes and sizes: stars, penguins, reindeer, you name it.

However, the stockings that hang from them are very attractive to children, with their bright colors, bells and bows. Within one hour of a Florida mother hanging a stocking on a star shaped hanger, her 18-month-old son pulled on the stocking causing the heavy hanger to fall off the mantel and strike him right between the eyes. Luckily his father was a plastic surgeon with some surgical supplies at home. He patched the boy up on the spot.

Not every child has been so lucky. Another suffered a deep puncture wound to the forehead and another child’s toe was crushed from these heavy stocking hangers. No deaths have been reported yet, but one child began vomiting (a symptom of brain trauma) after a stocking hanger fell on his head. He suffered no permanent injury.

Most of the injuries children suffer from falling stocking hangers probably hurt the parents more than the children. The vomiting boy’s mother said she was sick to her stomach with worry as she rushed her boy to the emergency room. For that reason alone, I’d keep my hangers packed and save them for later years.

Dads have to be careful too during the holidays. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that 13,000 Americans suffer holiday decoration related injuries that require emergency room treatment. Whether it’s falling from a ladder or a staple gun accident, the holidays are not a time to throw caution to the wind.

When you’re cutting through packaging, slow down. Also Make sure your candles are in safe places. Both these situations have caused injuries in holidays past. Make your holiday a merry one. Play it safe.

For example, some adults are afraid of flying but not driving even though your chances of dying in a traffic accident are much greater than your chances of dying in a airline crash. Unfortunately, many adults cannot shake their fear of flying even when confronted with the facts.

Luckily, the circumstances are different with most fears. For example, we might panic upon discovering that our child just ate our deodorant stick – that is unless we knew it could not cause serious injury. So while correct information may not cure your fear of flight, correct information is likely to be very helpful in assuaging parents’ fears of child injury and illness.

As a great service to parents everywhere, pediatrician and author Lara Sibners has written a book titled: If Your Kids Eat This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay: How to Know if Your Child’s Injury or Illness Is Really an Emergency.” In it. She presents a detailed guide to everything you don’t have to worry about your child eating, licking, putting in their ear, etc, etc.

She teaches parents to know the difference between the household items that will and won’t hurt our children. The book is full of great information about why each item is dangerous or not and when you really need to go the the emergency room.

Sibners presents worst case scenarios that usually turn out to be not so bad. This priceless book will put parents’ minds at ease.

ANSWER: Under Florida law, there is no specific age at which children become old enough to be held negligent. The rule is that children behavior is tested by what is reasonable under the circumstances, including age, experience and state of mental development of the child.

That is unless the child is doing something that usually only adults do like driving a car or boat or flying an airplane. Then the child is held to a higher standard of behavior – they are required to do the activity with the skill and care of an adult.

If the child is engaged in normal behavior for children, then the question is whether or not the child has the experience, intelligence, maturity, training or capacity to act with the care the situation requires. If so, then the child can be held liable for negligence. If not, then they can’t. That question is one that only a jury can answer. It is not for lawyers or judges to say. The specific facts of each circumstance and each child must be weighed by the jury. Every case is almost always very different.

As for the instructor or facility, the question of whether or not they can be liable for your daughter’s injuries is also a very fact intensive question. If either had a duty to protect your child from injury and breached that duty, they may be held liable. Answering those questions requires further information.

A jury would have to consider it reasonably foreseeable that injury could result from leaving the two girls without supervision. If a jury did decide it was reasonably foreseeable, that jury could find negligence if the instructor told the kids to stretch and then left the room to make a phone call.

However, if the instructor taught the children proper stretching form and watched them while they performed all their stretches, then it’s unlikely a jury would hold the instructor liable for your daughter’s injuries.

The specifics of each case are most often discovered during interviews called depositions where lawyers have an opportunity to question witnesses under oath. One important issue in a case like this is whether or not you as a parent signed a liability waiver. If you waived your right to sue the instructor and facility, then that document is binding.

The study coincides sadly with the child death of a Jacksonville, Florida 4-year-old who was killed yesterday when a television fell on her.

The study was conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio and found a 40 percent increase in child injuries caused by furniture falling on children since 1990. The study looked 12 different different kinds of furniture.

Children 6 and younger were found to be at the highest risk for injuries from falling furniture. The most common culprit: the family television.

Children 3 and under were found to be at the highest risk for the most serious injuries. They are more likely to sustain head and neck injuries than older children, who more often sustain lower body injuries from falling furniture.

Researchers report that 25 percent of the injuries were caused by children pulling or climbing on furniture.

Falling furniture causes an average of 14,000 emergency room visits each year for Americans under the age of 17. About 300 of those accidents are fatal.

The study’s senior author said his study probably underestimates the increase in child injuries from falling furniture because the study did not include data on injuries that did not result in hospital visits.

If you want to keep your child safe from this type of injury, taking a few simple steps can go a long way:

* Secure tippable furniture -- bolt it to the floor, strap it to the wall.
* Purchase furniture with wide legs, stable bases and a low center of gravity. Older televisions are very heavy and their wieght is disproportionately placed at the front. Place these front-heavy items on low stands at the back of piece of furniture they sit on.
* Never put anything on top of furnture. Children are naturally curious and will try to climb to get the object.

Some guidance exists for parents to find out if a piece of furniture is safe. ASTM-International has devised voluntary safety standards for furniture to reduce tipping. However, while many pieces of furniture on the market do not comply with the voluntary standard, even those that do comply with the standard have failed tip tests done by the Consumers’ Union.

Tougher standards are forthcoming. However, you should not rely on voluntary safety standards. Check the furniture yourself to see if it tips easily.

Here’s the corresponding video blog:

However, the Senate Judiciary Committee has refused to hear the bill in two weeks of meetings which means that it can not advance to the Senate floor for a full vote yet. For some reason, the House of Representatives has already OK’d the bill for a full vote.

Of course, a bill needs to be passed by both houses to become a law and fortunately that’s a long way off for now. The bill the tourist industry wants so badly would overturn a Florida Supreme Court decision and allow parents to waive their children’s right to sue businesses if the children are injured.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled that such waivers are against public policy because they shield businesses whose negligence leads to a child’s injury. The justices said that allowing parents to waive their children’s right to sue eliminates an important incentive for businesses to protect their customers from faulty rides and other potentially dangerous activities.

When are we going to stop allowing powerful businesses to shed responsibility for their actions? This country champions personal responsibility and I hope we can continue that tradition by not passing this bill.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks to see how this bill fares. The legislative session doesn’t end until May 1.