Does your kid really need that dose of cough medicine? Credit: Corbis
Many over-the-counter allergy and cold medications may cause drowsiness.

Hmm, really?

Quit bouncing off the walls for a minute, son. Daddy wants to give you something ...

Stop! Don't do it! A lot of parents joke about drugging their rambunctious kids into submission -- preferably with one of those tranquilizer darts from "Wild Kingdom."

Using Benadryl as a baby-sitter, however, is a form of child abuse, according to a study in the latest issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.

Dr. Shan Yin, a toxicology fellow at the University of Colorado, led the study and concluds that there are at least 160 reported cases a year where parents severely and maliciously control their children with drugs.

The key word there is "reported." Countless more cases fly under the radar.

The drugs range from illegal street narcotics to prescription and over-the-counter pain killers, stimulants, sedatives, antipsyhotics and cough/cold medications.

Yin and his team gathered information from the National Poison Data System.

Amitava Dasgupta, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, tells ABC News parents should never give cough medicine or pain killers to children under 2 without asking a physician.

And meds should never be given to kids just to shut them up, he adds. Dasgupta tells ABC News he agrees with Yin and the other researchers: It's a form of child abuse -- and should be a criminal offense.

Researchers found 14 percent of the reported cases between 2000 and 2008 resulted in moderate to major consequences. They also found 18 children died -- 17 from sedatives.

Carolyn Riley, 35, of Massachusetts was sentenced to life in prison in February after she sent her 4-year-old daughter to bed after giving her toxic levels of pyschotropic drugs. The little girl never woke up.

That may have been an extreme case, but Dasgupta tells ABC News many parents -- especially young ones -- don't think over-the-counter meds are any big deal. They're wrong, he says.

"Because a child or infant's body is not an adult body, pharmaceuticals can be dangerous," Dasgupta tells the network.

Doping kids "is likely to have cascading effects on the developing biology of children and even potentially long-term effects," Alan Kazdin, a professor of psychology and child psychiatry at Yale University, tells ABC News.

Yin's study couldn't determine parents' exact motivations. Pediatric experts tell ABC News parents might use meds to punish children or just get a few minutes of peace.

"If a child is very irritable and colicky, a parent may try to use cough and cold syrup to keep the child quiet, especially if the parent is overwhelmed and immature and thinks the child is doing this on purpose," Dr. Lea DeFrancisci Lis, an associate clinical professor at New York University School of Medicine, tells ABC News.

Researchers are not mind readers, James Hmurovich, president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America, tells the New York Daily News. They can't really know parents' motivations. Therefore, he adds, it's difficult to generalize the practice of medicating kids as child abuse.

Jill Smokler, a mother and blogger at ScaryMommy.com, writes on her blog that she has sympathy for the parents.

"I suppose it's better than screaming at or beating a kid when all your buttons are being pushed," she writes.

Smokler admits on her blog she once gave her 18-month-old daughter Benadryl, hoping the child would sleep through a two-hour flight.

"The plan backfired," Smokler writes on the blog. "She was wired. The flight was a disaster, and that was the end of that. Since then, I have never given my children medication as a way to benefit me. Lesson learned."

Nonetheless, she adds, she's not going to judge other parents. "I'm hardly a perfect parent," she writes. "Obviously, drugging your child is not a good idea. Big, fat f***ng duh. Neither is beating them or losing it on an airplane full of 200 people."




http://www.parentdish.com/2010/07/23/dosing-kids-with-drugs-to-shut-them-up-is-child-abuse-study-say/?icid=main|main|dl3|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.parentdish.com%2F2010%2F07%2F23%2Fdosing-kids-with-drugs-to-shut-them-up-is-child-abuse-study-say%2F

My PEDIATRICIAN once told me, before we flew on a 6 hour plane, to give my daughter the recommended dose of Benadryl to help calm her while we took off/landed." - So.. I don't think it's really harmful to be honest. I trust my daughter's pediatrician with her life, and with my own - as he was my pediatrician for years and years. She was also 2 at the time.

I think giving harmful sedatives or other kinds of drugs to "make them shut up" is a completely different story.

My OBGYN (not my ped) told me that when he and his daughter flew to Hawaii he compounded an infant sized amount of AMBIEN in CORN SYRUP and fed it to her, and then bragged that she slept through the whole flight. I never went to him again. This kind of thing happens all the time and is pretty widely accepted, surprisingly. I think it's sad that doctors can advocate this kind of thing, whether it's Benadryl or Ambien.

@-AndBabyMakesFour!- You don't find anything morally wrong with drugging your child simply to calm her down, regardless of it being the recommended dose?

@ Annonymous Source - I didn't say that I gave her the dose of Benadryl. I said our pediatrician recommended it for the plane ride, and I trust his judgement. I opted out of it because I didn't feel it was necessary.

@-AndBabyMakesFour!- Ah, sorry, I misread. :)

@ Anonymous Source - No problem! It happens

I copied that word for word and pasted it here. No imput has been added by me yet. Yet anyways lol Thoughts??

Are you really expecting anyone to say something other than, "It's wrong"?

Well, I have seen and heard parents do that before. I for one do think its totally wrong. But I want to see if there are any mothers on bloop who could argue or would try too. So.......I guess yes. I can't be wrong for that though right? People here have surprised us before.

Ahhh I dunno. I'd have been lost without opium when my daughter was born! ;D

Opi-WHAT?!??! lol

Firstly I hate that they imply young ones are the idiots that seem to find this ok. After quoting that a 35 year old killed her child but whatever.

Secondly. I have given childrens panadol to my daughter to calm her down in screaming fits where I am not 100% sure if it is pain related or not. Sue me, I'm a terrible mother.

I think that's perfectly reasonable when she might be sore and is too young to tell you. That certainly doesn't make you a bad mother.

LOL. I was being sarcastic.

I agree with Fraggle. I'm not a mamma but I had a feeling it was a pain and I think you did what you felt was right and I agree it could have been pain as well. I think there are times when it's ok , like times like that or the plain flights. I didn't say that earlier but I should have.

Plane* I cannot spell lol

It is totally wrong to drug your child just for the hope that they will sleep or calm down. If you are unsure of illness, I can maybe justify it. But most of the time if a parent gives a child an unneeded medication it causes them to just be even more wound up because they get overly tired and than cannot sleep because they are too tired...

I'm not a mother but I do know that when I was a little child and we would take a plane trip (periodically not all the time) my mother would give me a small kiddie dose of antihistimine to help me sleep through the flight. I really don't think there's anything wrong with that. Now if you're giving your kid doses of benadryl every other day because they're 'annoying' you or something... then that's a major problem.

@bluebella im a bad mom too.. my son wouldn't stop crying(almost 2 hrs!) at bed time and i gave him motrin..

I remember the first time I flew, I was only 2 years old and i know it's hard to remember anything at that age (except I have a disturbingly good memory sometimes) - however, the only reason I remember it was due to the excruciating pain I suffered during and for several hours after the flight. It was the first time I had ever flown and it was the most traumatic experience of my life - the pain has stuck with me. I would give anything to go back and visit my 2 year old self and drug the hell out of me if it means taking away that pain.

It hasn't put me off flying tho, I fly A LOT, I love flying, I go on random holidays simply for the sake of getting on the plane. I remember tho, 2 years ago, I was deathly sick - possibly the worst I have ever been, it was the only time the pain I suffered as a 2 year old returned. Seriously, I was in tears at 21 years old, If I had medication I would have drugged the hell out of my 21 year old self!!! It was unbareable for me at 21, so I don't know how on earth I lived through it at 2 years old.

I think under SOME circumstances, it might be ok. I mean if you're drugging your kid every other day - or even once a week - then there's an issue. If the childs sick or something, then yeh go for it. And on that note, I'm not exactly an advocate on meds, I'm stubborn as hell, it takes A LOT to get me to take anything, I have to be practically lying on my death bed before I admit defeat and take something.

Also, I know after crying for a long time, I get headaches. So based on that, wouldn't a child get a headache from throwing a tantrum? - I mean the kids I know have made themselves physically sick after some tantrums - so technically speaking, wouldn't that be basis to give them a kiddy dose of something? Nothing to harsh, nothing illegal, just like a kids panadol or something? That would be calming them down AND fixing an ailment?

I get headaches too after I cry. It's like an emotional hangover. That sucks you went through that pain, I wonder what could have caused it? You poor thing!

I think this article is referring to people like my SIL 8-|. First off she never reads the dosage chart or uses a dosage cup when giving my niece OTC medicines, like Tylenol for colds or what not, which just irritates me....but mainly, she used to give her daughter Melatonin at night to 'help her sleep' and calm her down....even though she didn't have sleeping problems, my SIL is just a terrible mother and can't control her kid or put her to bed without a fit. I know it's not a drug so much as a supplement and it's really not harmful...but obliviously you pump something into your body enough and your body stops producing it by itself, and it just wasn't even necessary for her to be taking it to begin with. Plus it said right on the bottle not recommended for people under 18. Its okay though because we threw them out one day when she wasn't home ;D.

I know in the UK melatonin is only licensed for those over either 50/55 and can only be given for a three week course.

Geez...my niece is 5!! And was probably 4ish when my SIL first started giving it to her. We don't have any kind of restrictions like that on it in the US, my mom takes it (along with a dozen other supplements after going through menopause) also but she's in her 50's. Here you can pick it up at any drug store in the vitamin section.