Do not shake or throw your child!

Do you find this warning unreasonable? Who could shake and throw the children?

Basically, these are two different activities with the same effect, but with different stimulus. Throwing occurs during a play, when parent throws the child up and catches him immediately, thinking that the child's laughter is a sign of joy and satisfaction of tots. Crying child is shaken during the adult's burst of anger, not realizing that the crying and screaming child is cause of parental failure in his upbringing.

Both of these manipulations with the child organism can permanently damage child's health. When throwing and catching the child, or severe shaking, the head is extremely bended – it is comparable to an injury which occurs as a result of a frontal impact of motor vehicle in traffic accident Despite the recommendations of the doctors about the inappropriate handling of a child, whether in good or in bad way, many parents do not know about consequences. We can say that in general, there is a little awareness of a so called shaken baby syndrome.

When throwing the child into the air and shaking him, his cervical spine and head suffers the most. In a severe head tilt, the cervical spine is bent, and due to the insufficient blood supply of vessels brain tissue suffers the damage and it may cause damage to the nerves. This damage is not immediately apparent, however, it gradually develops and begins to show itself in delayed development and later general psychomotor retardation. Not only reduced mobility and impaired mental development of the child, but seizures and impaired consciousness are a result of such manipulation. Repeated actions deteriorates the condition, but just a single shaking of a child is enough for a situation that can be very difficult to reverse. Especially vulnerable are children under one year. Of course, even the older children are not safe, apart from the fact that the adult does not catch the child from some unpredictable reason, or the child slips from his hands.

At first suspicion about the shaken baby syndrome, the child should be examined first by a neurologist, ophthalmologist, and then by any of the imaging techniques (magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, x-ray). However, physicians are many times in the diagnostics helpless. They make an effort to discover the causes of delayed development, but because of parents and their failure to confess that they threw and shook the child prevents the physicians to determine the right diagnosis. Treatment is therefore complicated and many times the medical procedures used have nothing in common with the disability and are therefore widely complex. They are trying to remove or mitigate the consequences of disability using neurological drugs, vitamin therapy and rehabilitation exercises.

And here it should be noted that the only way to prevent damage to the health of children in this case is to not throw the baby and NOT SHAKE him.

Even joyous laughter of a little baby flying up from the hands of parents or hysterical crying and screaming of a larger child to whom you refused to buy a toy does not give you a right to shake him and handle him without care. Perhaps it would be good to raise an awareness of parents and ask a pediatricians to explain to parents what can happen during such a treatment and remind them this fact regularly.