I’m a doctor — here are the Christmas presents that parents should avoid buying for kids
Last-minute Christmas gift shoppers beware, as a Florida doctor is sharing the toy items that are on her naughty list every holiday giving season.
In an Instagram Reel viewed by 8.1 million users, Meghan Martin, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, revealed what she says are “the top 5 Christmas gifts that can land your kid in the ER.”
Martin also went viral in March when she issued a BBQ grill brush warning on TikTok after a child swallowed a bristle and had to be taken to the emergency room.
Read on for Martin’s list of holiday gifts that should not be placed under your tree this year.
Here are her five.
1. Button batteries
“There are fatalities every year, unfortunately, from button batteries,” said Martin, who is also a mom of kids who are in elementary school and middle school.
The button batteries, she said, are “secured with these little cheap screws, and they can easily come open … They do all the time,” Martin said of the toys that expose the button batteries.
Lots of toys and ordinary household items are powered by button batteries, also called coin batteries and watch batteries.
They are small, single-cell batteries shaped like cylinders that are usually about 5 to 25 mm in diameter and 1 to 6 mm high — and because of their size and shape, they are a choking hazard.
“These are hard in some cases to get completely rid of,” Martin said.
“But obviously, especially with young kids and even sometimes pets, they are something to keep a close eye on just because they do have such a great potential for injury.”
Choking isn’t the only potential danger present by these small batteries, Martin said.
If button batteries are swallowed and get stuck in the esophagus, they can cause significant tissue injury in the esophagus and also in the airway.
“It can happen very quickly,” Martin said.
“You can start having tissue damage within about 15 minutes. Within a couple of hours, it can go all the way through the esophagus into major blood vessels from the esophagus into the airway. This can be life-threatening — and even if you figure it out, sometimes it can be too late,” she said.
One popular Christmas gift that potentially includes button batteries, Martin said, are noise-making books, small stuffed animals that move and talk, and many other toys.
“With these toys, make sure you know what’s in them. And if you’re able to get them out of your house — if you don’t like that book anyway — just get it out of your house and don’t have that risk available.”
One of the things to do if a child may have ingested a button battery, Martin said, is give small sips of honey on the way to the hospital, as long as the child is over 12 months old.
“It helps to coat the button battery,” Martin said.
“It decreases the contact between the battery and the tissue and so it decreases the injury until you can get the battery out,” she added.
2. Water beads
Water beads contain superabsorbent polymers that can expand to hundreds of times their original size after exposure to water, according to the National Poison Control Center.
These beads, which are often sold as sensory toys for children, are a choking hazard and can cause life-threatening intestinal blockage if swallowed.
“Water beads can be choking hazards if they’re kind of expanded,” Martin said.
“But if they’re not expanded and they’re ingested, they can swell in the GI tract and cause things like obstructions or something called an intussusception,” she said, adding that there have been fatalities associated with kids swallowing water beads.
Intussusception is a serious condition in which part of the intestine slides into an adjacent part of the intestine, according to Mayo Clinic, based in Rochester, Minnesota.
Martin said sometimes doctors can’t detect swallowed water beads because the product is the same density as the rest of the tissue.
“A lot of times we just have to go in surgically and kind of explore the intestines and see what’s going on,” she said. “So these can be very dangerous for lots of reasons.”
Though the polymers used to fill water beds are listed as nontoxic, Martin said parents cannot be too cautious here.
“I think the obstruction is definitely a concern,” Martin said, “but also there is that potential that these are not necessarily regulated with what polymer they are using. So there is the potential of it being toxic.”
3. Electric scooters and hoverboards
Motorized vehicles, such as scooters, are a no-go for Martin.
“We’re giving kids the power to kind of go fast and we know that kids don’t always make the best decisions,” Martin said.
Helmets do decrease the risk of injury, she said, but a lot of the injuries she sees are to the face, which isn’t protected by the helmet, and also to the forearms and elbows.
“So a helmet does help with head protection, but it doesn’t fully eliminate the risk of injury,” Martin said.
Martin said she’s a “big fan” of kid-powered things, but that electric- and gas-powered things for kids are quite a bit lower on her list of safe things.
“Same thing with hoverboards,” Martin said. “They can get going a little bit fast. We see so many kids fall on these, especially right after Christmas when everyone’s using their new toys.”
A lot of the injuries Martin sees are forearm fractures, elbow injuries and occasionally head injuries, too.
Martin said parents are also at risk when trying out their child’s new motorized toys.
“We see a lot of parents say, ‘Oh my gosh, I tried to pretend I was a kid and I fell on my butt on the hoverboard,'” Martin said.
4. Trampolines
“Trampolines can be really fun,” Martin said.
“But there are a lot of risks associated with them and a lot of the injuries that we see in the emergency department are pretty common trampoline injuries.”
Martin said most trampoline injuries occur in the lower extremities, to the lower leg, the tibia, fibula or the upper part just below the knee.
“We actually named a fracture a ‘trampoline fracture’ because we see it so commonly associated with trampolines,” Martin said.
The risk goes up, Martin said, when kids are on a trampoline with an adult.
“When there are two people bouncing, the kid kind of gets double bounced,” Martin said.
“But we do see kids absolutely get hurt even when they’re on trampolines by themselves.”
Head and neck injuries are also a concern.
“I actually saw a sternal fracture from a trampoline a couple of years ago,” Martin said.
“I hurt my own back on a trampoline when I was 13, so I might be holding a little bit of a grudge. So for my family, we’ve chosen to avoid them as best as possible.”
“Most of the injuries actually happen on the trampoline itself, not actually from falling off,” she said.
“So using the net or putting it in the ground really is kind of a false sense of security.”
5. Magnets
Martin said toys that include small magnets, like magnetic blocks or tiles, are to be avoided.
“It’s important to realize that these little magnets can be dangerous, especially when they’re swallowed together,” she said.
When magnets are swallowed separately, they will find their way together even on the inside of the body, said Martin.
“That can be dangerous because it can create holes in the stomach and the intestine,” Martin said.
“Those are not places you want holes.”
Martin’s ‘nice list’
“We’re choosing things that allow them to be creative,” Martin said of the gifts she’s giving her own kids this year.
“My younger one is getting dolls and Barbies, things that she can play with quietly by herself.”
Martin’s older kids are getting shoes and clothes, and some are getting non-motorized bicycles and scooters.
They’re also getting soccer accessories.
“It’s about getting outside and getting moving,” she said.
