Grapes Can Harm Your Children
My wise wife has always been on my case about grapes and not giving whole grapes to our children when they are too young. I resistively followed her advice, cutting grapes into quarters whenever we would serve them. On most grocery outings we would skip the grapes altogether because Jenn just didn’t want to have the stress of knowing that a stray grape might be left under a couch for Clarie to choke on.
Currently we struggle with my mother, who still insists on giving cherry tomatoes to Claire. Well, very recently, a young boy choked on a grape in San Jose and is has a severely damaged brain as a result. Read the story at the Mercury News and tell me if your not now convinced that foods like grapes, hotdogs, popcorn, cherry tomatoes can be a severe choking hazard for kids.
Consider, it’s one thing to cut them up, but also consider that if you have older kids even though they may be old enough to eat them whole, it’s very easy for the parent to be distracted, leave the older child to eat his grapes, and then find that the older child had left the bowl of grapes on the floor and the younger one is crawling to get them!
To alleviate the stress of having to keep track of where individual grapes, etc may roll, you may find Jenn’s position easier. Don’t buy grapes until all your children are old enough that they are not a choking hazard.
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