Smaller than a 20 cent coin
Look at a 20 cent coin. Anything smaller than that can block a child's airway. Then look at the floor of your house as if you were the one crawling. The hazard is usually already there.
Food is the everyday version. Raising Children wants you supervising, and wants them sitting down to eat. Lying down, running, playing and eating is how food goes the wrong way.
Sit with them. Talk. If you are the entertainment, they are less likely to stand up mid-mouthful.
A bottle in the cot is out. A baby who falls asleep feeding can pull liquid into the lungs and choke.
Size and shape matter more than your confidence in their chewing. Until they chew well, pea-sized or smaller. Cylinder foods, grapes, cherry tomatoes, sausages, get cut lengthways and then again, into quarters, not into round coins.
Whole nuts and seeds, and hard food like them, wait until 4 years old. Bones out of meat and fish. Pips out of olives and cherries.
Hard carrot and apple get cooked, grated or mashed. Peel on fruit comes off. Popcorn, marshmallows, whole lollies, corn chips, chewing gum, the page lists them for a reason.
A crying child does not get food. They cannot chew and swallow properly while they cry.
Around the house, the small stuff. Coins. Foil.
Jewellery. Screws and pins. Magnets, especially the strong little ones.
Button batteries. Pen lids. Toy parts.
If you would not want it in their windpipe, it does not live on the coffee table. A battery that is swallowed is urgent care, not a wait-and-see. Know that before you need the sentence.
Under 4s carry a higher risk. The risk does not politely end at the birthday. You keep cutting grapes after you are bored of cutting grapes.
You cannot watch every second of childhood. You can watch every meal, and you can make the floor boring. If they choke and cannot breathe, that is 000 and first aid you should have learned before today.
This page is the prevention. Do the prevention tonight. One lap of the room.
One rule at the table. You sit. They sit.
Pieces small. Teach the other adults the same cuts. Grandparents love round grapes and coin-shaped sausage.
Show them once, with a knife, without a lecture. Check the floor after a visit from a child who has small toys. One marble is enough.
Keep a note of what you did if something did go wrong, and tell the doctor the truth about what they were eating. Prevention is daily. Panic is a poor system.
Source: Raising Children Network