Dr. Candice Foy, a pediatric hospitalist, spoke with Cheddar News on how to teach your children to spot the differences between candy products and medications and how to keep dangerous medicines in storage.

<div class="block">Dr. Candice Foy, a pediatric hospitalist, spoke with Cheddar News on how to teach your children to spot the differences between candy products and medications and how to keep dangerous medicines in storage.</div>

Be Well: Determining the Difference Between Candy & Medicines for Children

I think you take a look at this chart that says, is it candy or is it medicine? And it really visually shows you just how close these are. You take a look at things like sweethearts or smarties and and they look just like a medicine. So for a child, this can be so dangerous, right? It's definitely enticing and kids learn how to look for candy. So it's not crazy to imagine they see a spare medication that's on the floor in grandma's purse lying in a night where they're going to be looking for it and think it's something edible to eat and they'll put that right in their mouth. So now what were to happen if, if a child, did you think it was a good, good and fruity and take out an actual medicine? It depends on the medicine. Some medicines can put the kids in the emergency department for observation, even admission worst case scenario, if it's something very serious like oxycontin, that kid can end up intubated and needing some help breathing for a while while the medication is wearing off. So important, especially those very potent medicines that we keep them as far away from the kids as possible. Ok. So let's talk about this because, you know, people might have some edibles in their house and the packaging looks a little bit better, although it does, does still, you know, have pretty colors but the stuff inside, you know, really, really dangerous. And this is candy. So instead of taking a little bite of a tablet and being like, oh, that doesn't taste good that kid, when they find it, they're taking the entire pack down. I've had kids find it in freezers, find it in purses, find it in glove boxes and they eat the entire pack and come in and they need to stay for a good 24 to 48 hours while the medication wears off. So what's really important is if you do, um, take any sort of cannabis and food, food is to put it out of the kitchen, out of reach and in lock boxes, you want to make sure that they can't see the packaging, they can't see what's going to be candy because they will find it and they will eat it. Yeah, especially if it's a gummy and even these. So right here this is, you know, a AAA gummy, it's candy coated so that people would want to have it. But this could also be something that's dangerous, but it's calcium, but you can't just eat a whole bottle. Correct. And a kid will, because it's sweet. The same thing with even the Flintstones Gummies or prenatal gummies. All these things, kids are gonna go for more than one survey and you need to make sure that it's up somewhere high out of reach and that they don't see you looking for it and going for it. Because if they know where it is, your two year old is taking a chair over to the counter to climb up. Right. They're smart and they're smarter than we realize. Yeah. And I think it was interesting when you put these two together, how much they look alike. And you would think, you know, a child's not gonna drink that, but maybe they would, especially if they know Gatorade tastes good or whatever color drink that they like. So it's really important if you do have chemicals around that we're putting in, in a cabinet that's locked. So this way they can't get it. And also when your kid gets old enough talking about what's a chemical, what can be dangerous and teaching them that they need to come to you because as good as we can be about locking things up, people make mistakes, people leave things open. Right. And I, I took a look at this. It's funny because it almost made me think of nerds the inside of this. There it goes as I spell it but like you take, take a look at it and it looks like we're even dippin dots. Yeah. And you know, we've heard so many horror stories of the kids with the different pods and these types of things. So, again, we really have to make sure it's all locked up and safe. And when do I, when do I call poison control? When you think a child ingested anything, give them a call, they'll tell you what to do. They'll let you know what to give the kid if you need to be looking for anything or if you need to get emergently to the hospital. So it's a great resource. Even if you're not sure if they ingested, they can give you some guidance.