If it isn’t food, don’t put it in your mouth! This has been my command to all three of my children. Only one of them listened, and that was Erick, my oldest son. Erick’s reflux was so bad as a child, he threw up almost everything, so he had no interest in putting anything at all in his mouth.

Sam put one bit of plastic in her mouth, and we fished it out almost immediately. She also swallowed half a bottle of infant vitamins, necessitating a call to poison control. Both these incidents happened before her second birthday, and by then she understood not to put non-food items in her mouth. She learned later not to touch magnets to the television screen!

But James, my youngest, was the one who at age 4, had to go to urgent care after blithely announcing he had swallowed a dime. I was reminded of this recently, when I took him to the same urgent care for his COVID-19 test. Thankfully, unlike his COVID test, the visit for the dime only involved an X-ray. And he passed the dime a day later without complications or medical intervention.

This was not the case for Justin McNair, a 4-year-old Indiana boy, who swallowed 25 tiny magnet toys. Doctors had to coax the magnets from his stomach, before they reached his intestines, where they could have caused catastrophic damage. (Source: NBC News, Nov. 15, 2020)

With COVID in the picture, it’s important to remind children not to touch their faces, let alone put foreign objects in their mouths. This is difficult, even for adults. As a mother, I can tell you this is a near impossibility for kids.

The best you can really do is keep reminding the kids, and encourage frequent handwashing. Don’t forget to tell them soap and hand sanitizer, no matter how good they might smell, should not go in their mouths.