Want Some Milk With Those Crayons?

The reason that I buy only Crayola crayons is simple: my son eats crayons. With all of the lead-ridden products coming out of China I can rest much easier knowing that my son is eating only crayons made in the USA. How he can stand to have all of that waxy goodness packed into the crevices of his teeth I’ll never know. Any time that he consumes something potentially bad for him I make him drink milk.

I have had to phone poison control twice since becoming a mother. The first time because the little guy picked up a philodendron leaf that one of the cats was chewing on and put it into his mouth. I’ve always been told that this particular plant is poisonous, so I called up the poison experts. According to the gentleman I spoke to philodendron leaves can’t kill you; but they can cause your mouth to become painfully inflamed. He told me to give my son milk.

The second time I called was because I accidentally brushed the boy’s teeth with my prescription toothpaste. (I actually wasn’t even sure that I had brushed his teeth with the wrong paste, but I thought I might have.) Since young children do not understand how spit out toothpaste, baby toothpaste contains no fluoride: it’s bad to swallow fluoride. I blamed the mishap on the fact that I was very pregnant and therefore delirious; his toothbrush and paste were even on a totally different shelf than my own. Anyway, the nurse felt that the small amount BoBeans had swallowed shouldn’t do him any harm, but told me to watch him for signs of disorientation and vomiting. She also suggested I make him drink some milk.

Apparently milk is the anti-poison. The next time your kid snatches the cleaning sponge and bites into it, finds an unidentifiable piece of something on the floor and puts it into his mouth, or adds crayon as the third course to his dinner just make him drink some milk. Milk: it does a body good.