Health

An FDA advisory committee has recommended banning cold and flu medications for children under the age of six. While the FDA isn't required to follow the advice of its advisory panels, it usually does, meaning perennial parental favorites like Pediacare and Tylenol Infant Drops could soon be off the market.

What does this mean for America's beleaguered parents? 23/6's medical expert, Dr. Margaret Sheif, opens up and gets personal.

Hello Folks,

We all know that helpless feeling we get when a child becomes ill. As a mom, you would do anything to drown out the sound of their coughing. No one can blame you for thinking that if one teaspoon of Dimetapp will dry up your child's nose, then two will make her stop asking for her blanky, which Dad left on his whore's houseboat.

Now it turns out the FDA may ban cold and cough medication for young children. The meds have been linked to the deaths of 123 children since 1969 (which seems bad but actually averages out to just three per year). If you plan on following the advisory board's recommendations, you may wonder how to care for your little ones when they get sick. I would like to speak from my own experience, because I am not just a physician. I am also the mother of three beautiful children, ages four, five and nine or so. The youngest two are mine, while the white one came courtesy of my husband's first marriage. Of course, I love all three as if they were black.

I have, in the past, given adult medication to my children, but only after I tried it out on the oldest one first. If you don't have access to a practice child, remember that emotional support works almost as well as banned substances, particularly if you take those banned substances yourself before trying to display real affection.

I like to comfort my children with the same stories my mother used to tell me when I had the sniffles. There was the one about the dog who gave polio to girls who blew their noses after 10 p.m., and the Bible story about the little boy who got out of bed and asked Jesus to get him a glass of water. Jesus, in all His goodness, gave the little boy an ocean of water and then dropped him in it. The little boy was never heard from again.

The bottom line is that colds aren't fatal, and your little one will recover. And if he doesn't, he probably didn't have a cold in the first place.

Yours in health,
Dr. Sheif