AIBU...grapes...

[LokiBear]

Dd1 is 6.5. I still cut her grapes in half. She wants me to stop. She helped me make her lunch for tomorrow earlier and asked me to leave them whole. I said that she must make sure she eats them properly. I'm not sat here debating cutting them up. Wwyd?

Well I never had my grapes but as a child and never choked, but other kids did. And my mum wasn't aware of the risks. I am, so I choose, personally, to eliminate that risk with very little bother. In the late 70's not a lot was known about in car safety and I was put to sleep with a blanket in the boot (no parcel shelf) on long journeys. We know more nowadays about that as a risk and so don't do it. If it wasn't illegal I still would not do it - even though I was fine doing this as a child. You work with the knowledge you have at the time. This 'well it never happened to me' argument is so incredibly flaccid. If you consider the risk and would like to take it anyway then that's grand and of no consequence to me, but don't have a poke at those that decide to reduce risk, when it has zero negative impact on the child.

To give some context:

Altkorn et al reviewed fatal and non-fatal food injuries among children aged 0-14 over the course of 10 years, from data from 26 paediatric hospitals in the US and Canada. They found the following:

Injury (not fatal, number of cases, followed by %):

Peanuts 375, 26%
Meat 96, 7%
Sunflower seeds 95, 7%
Popcorn 71, 5%
Carrot 69, 5%
Hotdog 62, 4%
Chicken 48, 3%
Fish bone 48, 3%
Apple 40, 3%
Candy 40, 3%

Fatal:
Hotdog 16, 16%
Candy 10, 10%
Grapes 8, 8%
Meat, 7, 7%
Peanut 7, 7%
Carrot, 6, 6%
Cookie 6, 6%
Apple 5, 5%
Popcorn 5, 5%
Bread 4, 4%
Total 103 cases.

So over the course of 10 years in the USA and Canada, across 26 major centres, only 8 cases of fatal grape aspiration were recorded, and meat, peanuts, sweets, and particularly hotdogs are just as worthy of attention, just not on MN.

Additionally, 6 out of 8 of those grape fatalities occurred in children under 3.

I did a first aid course which was run by a paramedic. He said because of what he had witnessed during the course of his job he always slices grapes and cherry tomatoes for himself and anyone else who is eating them.
Since then all grapes and tomatoes get sliced in our house.

I understand that hotdogs are statistically more risky but hot dogs aren't eaten anywhere near as often as grapes, in my family or in schools.

I remember all too well how much teasing I got at that age if my mum gave me egg sandwiches

I was in high school, probably 14, when a "friend" passed derogatory remarks about the smell of my salmon sandwiches (which I absolutely loved). I was such a sook/so socially inept, that rather than tell her to take a flying leap, I didn't take them any more.

but hot dogs aren't eaten anywhere near as often as grapes, in my family or in schools.

Yet despite the much greater consumption, grapes still pose a very small risk.

Just to reiterate those stats: 8 fatal cases, over 10 years, from data from hospitals serving tens of million children in North America.

The way MN talks about grapes suggests it's happening every week.

I'm ok with them being eaten at the table, at home. When I'm around to stop daft running around. But I am much more careful about what they take as a snack at school when they are likely to be chomping down food quickly in the playground while running around.

My DD school sent a letter out requesting that if we were including grapes in their snacks then they need to be cut up due to choking concerns..... but she's since told me that if they have cheese as desert then it comes with grapes that are whole 😳

I'm not sure I ever cut grapes for dd. Maybe I did. I actually have no idea. I know I never cut cherries for her, just warned to eat them carefully "because there's an enormous stone in the middle", which she was to spit out on the plate.

I never cut crusts off either.

DS 2 is 16 months. I don't cut his grapes.... Bad mummy :-)!

Yeah. Really, really amusing.

The reason why there are less fatalities is because parents like most who have posted here cut the grapes.

Admittedly, your chances of choking to death on a grape are incredibly small. But your chances of winning the lottery are incredibly small too, and how many people regularly buy lottery tickets?

I'd rather take an extra minute with the knife and chopping block and remove the risk of it happening to me and people I care for, than trust that everything will be dandy. It really is just such a little thing to do, but might make a big difference.

Well. At 6.5, IF she chews her food properly, you probably don't really need to - but if she's a food gulper who rushes and doesn't chew properly then I can see your point.

I cut my sons' grapes in half til they were 4, both of them but in quarters until they were at least 3 - because no.1 son managed to nearly choke on a half grape, by inhaling it broadside on and getting it stuck at the back of his mouth. It wasn't even that big - but it went in the wrong way and he sucked it in rather than eating it properly. Shows how easy it is to choke on a grape!

DS is 7 ... I've never cut the grapes ... is that a thing?

I would either cut them or not give them!

Thanks for the stats. I hadn't realised just how rare it is for a child to die of choking on a grape.

The reason why there are less fatalities is because parents like most who have posted here cut the grapes.

You can't make that assumption. Firstly, the paranoia on MN is not necessarily representative of the real world. Second, there are no data on how grapes are administered to children around the world, and at what age they're cut etc. It may be that there are only 8 fatalities over 10 years despite most children being given whole grapes, meaning the rate of fatality per patient whole grape ingestion is even lower.

I'm not saying don't cut up grapes. What I'm saying is most children cope fine, chew their food, and the recommendations after a published article last year was to cut up grapes for under 5s. I think people lose perspective of risk, especially when you look at other foods, so it's worth taking a step back and think rationally as to why you're doing what you're doing, especially for older children and adults. Like I alluded to, I've never seen a MN thread titled "AIBU to cut/smash all my child's sweets to a size < diameter of their trachea?"

And I bet sweets get eaten more than grapes .

Given trained professionals often find it impossible to dislodge a grape when someone is choking on it, I’m very surprised parents trust themselves or school lunch supervisors to do a better job of it.

Grapes are the perfect size & shape to get stuck and, due to their texture, are virtually impossible to dislodge.

If you still think it’s daft, try googling it & reading the stories of parents who lost their 5/7/10 year olds due to choking on grapes. See if you still find it so silly & amusing.

It takes a split second for a child to inhale (laugh, cough, trip over) and get a grape lodged in their throat...why, for the sake of a few seconds to slice them lengthways, would you take that risk?

Your child, your risk, but don’t say you weren’t warned.

I think where I live in the US, people would find it ridiculous to cut a child's grapes past age 3. We stopped at about 18 months. The idea that we're all over here cutting up grapes and that's why less than 1 kid per year out of a population of 300,000,000 dies from grape choking is silly. Preschoolers don't get halved grapes. And now I see people saying they quarter them? No one does that. No one!

What's left of the grape when you try to cut them into quarters? Ridiculous.

I honestly had no idea you are supposed to cut them up for kiddies. I consider myself educated and thankfully no accidents to date.

Doctor's advice is good enough for me. I'd rather not even have the unecessary terror of a near miss that doesn't get included in the stats
www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/20/lack-of-awareness-of-grape-choking-hazard-putting-children-at-risk-say-doctors

It takes a split second for a child to inhale (laugh, cough, trip over) and get a grape lodged in their throat...why, for the sake of a few seconds to slice them lengthways, would you take that risk?

Because when you compare the number of fatalities (single figures over decades) with the consideration of how many children eat whole grapes on a daily basis means the risk of death per Whole Grape Ingestion Episode (WGIE) is likely to be incredibly small.

We don't know what the the WGIE rate is, but let's say, for argument's sake, that 1000 children in North America eat whole grapes once daily. That is a very, very conservative estimate for a country with a population of around 25 million 0-5 year olds. So that's 365,000 WGIE a year, 3,650,000 every decade. We know that around 8 children die per decade. So that's just under a risk of 1 in 500,000. If there are 10,000 WGIE per day, that's a risk of 1 in 5 million. Alternatively, millions of children eat whole grapes daily without problems.

Now consider that in the context of other accidents in the UK:
10 children die each year from falls.
Plastic nappy bags have killed a child a year over the last 15 years.
There have been at least 30 deaths from blind cord strangulation from since 1999.

So it's about fully understanding the risk. Yes, cutting grapes doesn't take long, but there isn't a grape choking epidemic.

The proceedure is called "abdominal thrust "and should not be carried out on a child. Recomendations are they are cut up for small children. When my DGD was born 8 years ago, their Mum was given a first aid course at the local GP surgery as standard. When she was just over a year old, she was actually in Hospital kids ward having tests for CF, when she put a crayon in hier mouth and started choking I whacked her on the back and then tipped her upside down, A friend at school was 13 when walking downstairs eating a tiny bit of cheese, chicked and died, aparently its because cheese is sticky its very difficult to dislodge.