It’s almost that time again; time to think all things school.

The following tips come from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, www.nhtsa.gov, reminding us that young children need frequent reviews about bus safety and bus behavior. Children need to know the Danger Zone, which is the area on all sides of the bus where children are in the most danger of being hit. Officials from nhtsa suggest:

REVIEWING HOW TO GET ON AND OFF THE BUS SAFELY:

• When getting on the bus, stay away from the danger zone and wait for the driver’s signal
• Board the bus one at a time
• When getting off the bus, look before stepping off the bus to be sure no cars are passing on the shoulder (side of the road) and move away from the bus
• Stay ten feet away from the bus and never go behind the behind the bus
• Before crossing the street, take five “giant steps” out from the front of the bus, or until you can see the driver’s face, then  wait for the driver to signal that it’s safe to cross
• Look left-right-left when coming to the edge of the bus to make sure traffic is stopped and keep watching traffic when crossing

TAKE THE FOLLOWING BUS SAFETY STEPS:

• Supervise children to make sure they get to the stop on time, wait far away from the road, and avoid rough play
• Teach your child to ask the driver for help if he/she drops something near the bus
• If a child bends down to pick up something, the driver cannot see him/her and the child may be hit by the bus
• Have your child use a backpack or book bag to keep loose items together
• Make sure clothing and backpacks have no loose drawstrings or long straps, to get caught in the handrail or bus door
• Encourage safe school bus loading and unloading
• If you think a bus stop is in a dangerous place, talk with your school office or transportation director about changing the location

REVIEWING BUS RULES:

• Always stay seated when on the bus
• Fasten your seat belt, if there are seat belts
• Don’t put any part of you out the window: arms, head, etc
• Always talk quietly because loud noises could make driving difficult for the driver
• There is no eating or drinking on the bus
• Keep backpacks, books, instruments off the floor. The aisles need to be clear for kids to walk and in case of an emergency
• Never play with the emergency exits
• Never throw anything at one another or out the windows when in the bus
• Be ready to get off the bus when you reach your stop so you don’t keep everyone waiting

Most of us think lasers are cool. What we may not know is that when operated unsafely, or without certain controls, the highly-concentrated light from lasers—even those in toys—can be dangerous, causing serious eye injuries and even blindness. And not just to the person using a laser, but to anyone within range of the laser beam.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is particularly concerned about this potential danger to children and those around them.

According to a health promotion officer at FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, “A beam shone directly into a person’s eye can injure it in an instant, especially if the laser is a powerful one.”

However, laser injuries usually don’t hurt, and vision can deteriorate slowly over time. Eye injuries caused by laser light may go unnoticed, for days and even weeks, and could be permanent.

Some examples of laser toys are:

• lasers mounted on toy guns that can be used for “aiming;”
• spinning tops that project laser beams while they spin;
• hand-held lasers used during play as “lightsabers;” and
• lasers intended for entertainment that create optical effects in an open room.

FDA Regulates Lasers

A laser creates a powerful, targeted beam of electromagnetic radiation that is used in many products, from music players and printers to eye-surgery tools. FDA regulates radiation-emitting electronic products, including lasers, and sets radiation-safety standards that manufacturers must meet. This includes all laser products that are marketed as toys.

Toys with lasers are of particular interest to the FDA because it’s often children who are injured by these products. Because advertisers promote them as playthings, parents and kids alike may believe they’re safe to use.

For toys to be considered minimal risk, the FDA recommends that the levels of radiation and light not exceed the limits of Class 1, which is the lowest level in regulated products. Lasers used for industrial and other purposes often require higher radiation levels. But in toys, those levels are unnecessary and potentially dangerous.

In recent years, lasers have increased markedly in power and have gone way down in price. And while adults may buy a laser pointer for use in work, kids often buy them for amusement.

Low-cost, compact laser pointers used to be quite low in power but, in the last 10 years, many laser pointers have increased in power 10-fold and more. The fact that lasers can be dangerous may not be evident, particularly to the children who use them as toys, or to the adults who supervise them.

Tips to Keep in Mind

• Never aim or shine a laser directly at anyone, including animals. The light energy from a laser aimed into the eye can be hazardous, perhaps even more than staring directly into the sun.
• Do not aim a laser at any reflective surface.
• Remember that the startling effect of a bright beam of light can cause serious accidents when aimed at a driver in a car or otherwise negatively affect someone who is engaged in other activity (such as playing sports).
• Look for a statement that it complies with 21 CFR (the Code of Federal Regulations) Subchapter J on the label.

If you buy a laser toy or pointer and you don’t see this information in the labeling, it’s best not to make any assumptions about its safety.

Source: FDA Consumer Updates

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made it easier for parents and health care professionals to find information on pediatric medications. The FDA created a database that covers medical products studied in children under recent pediatric legislation.

The ^C4 is a one-stop resource. You can search for information by the product’s commercial or chemical name, or by the condition for which it was studied. FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics (OPT), which focuses on safety, scientific, and ethical issues that arise in pediatric clinical trials or after products are approved for use in children, developed the tool in collaboration with another branch of the agency, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

OPT also maintains a Safety Reporting page⁵ with information on products that have been tied to safety problems that specifically relate to children. This page lists products that have been the subject of an adverse event report presented to FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee, a group of outside experts that advises the agency on pediatric treatments, research and labeling. (An adverse event is any undesirable experience associated with a medical product.)  The committee’s recommendation is also given if further actions were necessary to ensure safe use of the product in children.

“We are excited to share this goldmine of information with parents,” says Debbie Avant, R.Ph., the health communications specialist in OPT who helped develop and maintain the database. “We want parents to know they can rely on FDA for accurate, timely information about the medications their children take.”

Pediatric Medication Labels

Parents should always read medicine labeling carefully. For prescription medications and vaccines, there is a Pediatric Use section in the labeling that says if the medication has been studied for its effects on children. The labeling will also tell you what ages have been studied. (This labeling is the package insert with details about a prescription medication.)

Congress’ efforts to increase the number of studies of prescription drugs used in children have allowed FDA to build a foundation for pediatric research and discover new things. For example, researchers have found that certain drugs produce more side effects for the nervous system in children than adults, says Dianne Murphy, M.D., OPT’s director.

FDA is able to use information gathered from pediatric studies to make labeling changes specific to kids, and to share that news with the public. The database, which is updated regularly, currently contains more than 440 entries of pediatric information from the studies submitted in response to pediatric legislative initiatives. The labeling changes include:

• 84 drugs with new or enhanced pediatric safety data that hadn’t been known before;
• 36 drugs with new dosing or dosing changes;
• 80 drugs with information stating that they were not found to be effective in children; and
• 339 drugs for which the approved use has been expanded to cover a new age group based on studies.

The easiest way for parents to use the database is to search by their child’s condition to find all mentions of that condition in all of the labeling information within the database. If you know the name of the drug you want to find, sort the database’s information by trade name.

Avant says parents should note that the database contains the version of the label at the time of the labeling change. It may not be updated with later changes if they don’t affect children.

OPT has also evaluated the amount of progress in the inclusion of pediatric information in drug labeling and has published a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association⁶⁷on May 9, 2012. They found that in 2009, more than 60% percent of the drugs used for both adults and children that were in the Physician’s Desk Reference—a drug information resource for physicians and other health professionals—had specific information on pediatric use, compared to only 22 percent in 1975.

Critical information in the pediatric section of the labeling tells you if the product was studied in children but could not be shown to work. When a product has been studied in adults and cannot be shown to be effective, that information is not put in the label. However, Congress told FDA to put this information in labeling when a product had been studied in children and was not effective.

“There is still much work to be done, as we have only studied two thirds of the products that are already on the market,” says Murphy. “And there is a steady stream of new products approved every year for children and adults.”

Source : FDA Consumer Updates page

OnGuardOnline.gov wants you to know that as a parent, you have control over the personal information companies collect online from your kids under 13.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act gives you tools to do that. The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, enforces the COPPA Rule. If a site or service is covered by COPPA, it has to get your consent before collecting personal information from your child and it has to honor your choices about how that information is used.

What is COPPA?  

The COPPA Rule was put in place to protect kids’ personal information on websites and online services — including apps — that are directed to children under 13. The Rule also applies to a general audience site that knows it’s collecting personal information from kids that age.

COPPA requires those sites and services to notify parents directly and get their approval before they collect, use, or disclose a child’s personal information. Personal information in the world of COPPA includes a kid’s name, address, phone number or email address; their physical whereabouts; photos, videos and audio recordings of the child, and persistent identifiers, like IP addresses, that can be used to track a child’s activities over time and across different websites and online services.

Does COPPA affect the sites and services my kids use?

If the site or service doesn’t collect your child’s personal information, COPPA is not a factor. COPPA kicks in only when sites covered by the Rule collect certain personal information from your kids. Practically speaking, COPPA puts you in charge of your child’s personal information.

How does COPPA work?

COPPA works like this: Let’s say your child wants to use features on a site or download an app that collects their personal information. Before they can, you should get a plain language notice about what information the site will collect, how it will use it, and how you can provide your consent. For example, you may get an email from a company letting you know your child has started the process for signing up for a site or service that requires your child to give personal information. Or you may get that notice on the screen where you can consent to the collection of your child’s personal information.

The notice should link to a privacy policy that’s also plain to read — and in language that’s easy to understand. The privacy policy must give details about the kind of information the site collects, and what it might do with the information — say, if it plans to use the information to target advertising to a child or give or sell the information to other companies. In addition, the policy should state that those other companies have agreed to keep the information safe and confidential, and how to contact someone who can answer your questions.

That notice also should have directions on how to give your consent. Sites and services have some flexibility in how to do that. For example, some may ask you to send back a permission slip. Others may have a toll-free number you can call.

If you agree to let the site or service collect personal information from your child, it has a legal obligation to keep it secure.

What are my choices?

The first choice is whether you’re comfortable with the site’s information practices. Start by reading how the company plans to use your child’s information.

Then, it’s about how much consent you want to give. For example, you might give the company permission to collect your child’s personal information, but not allow it to share that information with others.

Once you give a site or service permission to collect personal information from your child, you’re still in control. As the parent, you have the right to review the information collected about your child. If you ask to see the information, keep in mind that website operators need to make sure you are the parent before providing you access. You also have the right to retract your consent any time, and to have any information collected about your child deleted.

What if it looks like a site or service is breaking the rules? 

If you think a site has collected information from your kids or marketed to them in a way that violates the law, report it to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint.

With all the concerns about children’s food consumption, and gaining unhealthy amounts of weight, the following guidelines, on what to feed children 4-8 years old, may prove helpful.

The guidelines are from WebMD (fit.webmd.com).

DAIRY

Total Servings a Day: 4

Look for reduced-fat, low-fat, or skim.

1 Serving Size

Milk

1/2 to 3/4 cup

Cheese

Choose 1:

• 2 to 3 dice-sized cheese cubes

• 1/2 to 1 slice packaged cheese

Yogurt

1/2 cup to 3/4 cup (4 to 6 oz)

PROTEIN

Total Servings a Day: 2

Make most meat choices lean or low-fat.

1 Serving Size

Meat, Fish, Poultry, or Meat Substitute

1 oz (about the 1/3 to 1/2 the size of an adult’s palm)

Tofu or Tempeh

1/2 cup

Egg

1 egg

4 Tbsp (about the size of your child’s fist)

Beans or Peas

Nuts (includes peanut butter)

2 Tbsp

VEGETABLES

Total Servings a Day: 4 to 8

Serve mostly green or brightly colored veggies.
Limit starchy veggies like potatoes.

1 Serving Size

3 to 4 Tbsp

Starchy Vegetables (like white potatoes)

Limit to 1 to 2 servings a day.

FRUIT

Total Servings a Day: 2

Raw fruit is best.

1 Serving Size

Choose 1:

• 1/2 to 1 small raw fruit

• Canned 4 to 6 Tbsp

Opt for fruit packed in water, juice, or light syrup
instead of heavy syrup.

4 to 6 oz total per day

Fruit Juice

GRAINS

Total Servings a Day: 4

Choose whole-grain options when possible.

1 Serving Size

Choose 1:

• 1 slice of bread

• 1/2 English muffin

• 1/2 Bagel

• 1/2 to 1 Tortilla

Cooked cereal

1/2 cup

Cold, Dry cereal

1 cup

Pasta, noodles, rice or grains

1/2 cup

Sources:

Pediatric Nutrition Handbook 6th edition, American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition. 2009.

American Cancer Society: “Controlling Portion Sizes.”

Let’s Move: “Healthy Families.”

A Parent’s Guide to Childhood Obesity, American Academy of Pediatrics. 2006.

© 2011 WebMD

fit.webmd.com