In a couple of recentcases in the news children were given benadryl, available over the couner, to sedate them by care providers. According to this page one of its uses is quieting children. From the second article:
The law crafted in response to the North Carolina case appears to my untrained eye to be fairly useless as a day care can just add a form at enrollment that the parents sign giving them consent to use OTC drugs as the daycare feels appropriate, and there is some reason for a daycare to do so, say in order to provide basic first aid.
The articles surrounding these two cases mention this practice in other places, and I remember other that I can’t find cites for. Most not resulting in injury to any child, but in the news because a parent found out and was angry. When did this get to be such a common strategy? Does anyone think that it is a valid child care strategy if done with more skill that the cases that involved death? Are laws needed to prohibit this practice? Is the law passed in North Carolina a good law or is it too flawed?
I think that were I, as a parent, to feel the need to pick my child up early from daycare for some reason, and I were to inadvertently overdose my sniffy-nosed child on benadryl due to not being told of this “policy”, I’d be rather miffed, to say the least.
No, not a valid child care strategy.
Is it a related debate to refer to the “daycare” of the elderly in homes?
I’ve also heard anecdotal evidence of this being used to manage patients both child and adult in hospital settings. I chose not to deal with the practice in other settings because I could not find good cites.
I can tell you with great certainty that it is used for sedation in adult hospital settings, because I do it all the time (in the acute inpatient setting). Not against the patient’s will, of course, unless they’re being abusive, and then I’ll usually go for bigger guns (or the o’ 2/5/50–2 mg Ativan, 5 mg Haldol, 50 mg Benadryl. Don’t make any plans for a while!)
Being in the hospital sucks, and if I were in there, I’d want to be sedated as all hell.
But in a child care setting? I wouldn’t worry about OD–you have to take a lot of Benadryl to do any damage–but I would expect more from a child care provider than to just sedate the child when they get loud and annoying. Children get that way regularly, and if it bugs someone that much then that person should consider a different career.
As an adult, a doctor prescibed benadryl to help me get some rest when I had severe headaches rather than a strong pain killer. I was glad for it. He explained what it was and why he suggested it. I was especially grateful as it was offered as an alternative to an injection offered by another physician who was being evasive about what was in the injection. I hate it when doctors say things like “just something for the pain.”
But the anecdotes I heard was not that kind of situation, or the situation you described, but rather as way to deal with annoying patiend. In one case benadrly was a casual suggestion of one health care provider to another on how to deal with problem patients. In one case a nurse remarked that she had had a screaming patient and decided that he looked “itchy” and had sought out a first year resident to try to get him to prescibe some benadryl so she would not have to listen to the patient anymore.
DoctorJ a few of the articles I found while looking into this referenced instances of children ODing on benadryl. It may not be easy to do this but some people manage it.
DoctorJ, in fact some babies have died from Benadryl overdoses. It is hard to OD an adult on the stuff, but babies don’t have as much tolerance for it, apparently. Others have died from suffocation while sedated, which, while not strictly an overdose, is definitely a complication of sedation.
Well, to chime in, our doctor recommended dosing the little one (6 months) with benadryl to keep him comfortable (and us sane) on his first plane ride. it worked very well.
that said, i do have concerns about child care providers using it, especially without documentation or notifying the parents.
I am not in N. Carolina, but I signed a similar form when I enrolled my son in daycare and I am required to renew it every six months to a year. However, whenever the daycare does use this permission to dose my son with tylenol or whatnot, they are required to inform me that they have done so, what dose they gave, and at what time to prevent any kind of overdose or excessive use on the part of the daycare.
A long time ago actually. Haven’t you ever heard the old stories about dosing a colicy baby with a swig of whisky to calm them down? And alcohol hasn’t been the only drug so used…
From here
So it’s not a new strategy at all, simply a new drug being used to carry it out. The main difference seems to be that, rather than the mothers drugging the children, it is instead secondary care givers.
Not really. Especially if it’s being done to curtail simple childish exuberance, and not out-of-control behaviors. Do I think a parent should be considered a degenerate for intentionally sedating their kid once in a great while? NO. But I do think a day care center should be staffed with people who care enough about their charges to seek other methods for dealing with them. Like **Dr J. ** said, if they don’t like the gig they should find a new one.
If the day care center or kindergarten treated Furdette or Microfurd like that, then the best they could hope for would be a lawsuit. The worst would be a Kiwi injection administered personally by Papa Furd.
Intentionally sedating a child for anything except medical purposes is wrong. Yes, Belladonna, I consider intentionally sedating a child for anything but medical reasons to be the mark of a degenerate parent. If you need a break, find a friend to watch the kid, call your parents if they are close by and ask for help. Doping your kid is not the answer.
What about Stonebrew’s example? While a doc did recommend it, it wasn’t technically medically necessary–rather it was done for the comfort and convienence of everyone involved. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that.
That one is a bugger. I’d personally have not done it unless one of the kids was having some kind of panic reaction to the whole thing. Mrs. Furd and I had to make a trip from Germany to the US when Furdette was a little less a year old (my brother died in an accident and we went to the funeral.) We did not sedate the kid. We played with her and kept her busy and she did pretty well. Just about the only thing that was a problem was the air pressure during landing, and Yakov Smirnov (who happened to be on our flight into Springfield, MO) suggested to my wife that she give Furdette a pacifier or a bottle (as his wife used to do when their children were so small) to suck on during landing to help relieve the pressure change.
Providing someone with sedation-inducing medication because they’ve requested it, or medicating someone who is too young to consent or who lacks competency to consent (if you’re the guardian) is one thing. I myself am happy to have a few Ambien capsules around in case I do something pain-inducing and reach the point that I’d really like to sleep for awhile.
Doing it to anyone legally competent without their knowledge and consent is felony assault, I believe (IANAL), and should be prosecuted as such.