Shaking Babies
I was driving down Washington street the other day and this billboard randomly stuck out to me. I said “babies are fragile. Don’t shake babies.” When I first saw it I thought it was ridiculous common sense and why would someone take the time to put that on a billboard. I even told a couple of my friends about it and they all thought it was very random. I decided to google it to see if it had some other meaning. It doesn’t. Turns out shaken baby syndrome is a huge problem for the child, causing brusing of the brain and bleeding behind the eyes, which could lead to seizures, blindness, paralysis, mental retardation or even death. Unfortunately, more and more cases are being discovered all the time. As a result the Kempe Foundation and the National Center on Shaken Babies have started a nation wide campaign to educate the masses, because it turns out not shaking babies is NOT common sense. the exact percentage is debated in different studies but most agree that somewhere between 25 and 50% of teenagers and adults didn’t know that shaking a baby was dangerous. I guess this billboard was really a good idea after all.
