This guidance is beyond suspect. It falls into the category of "drink 8 glasses of water a day." Doctors parrot it, but they have no foundation for saying this and no one knows when/why they started saying it. But they all say it.

Any serious medical professional worth a damn will immediately question the SIDS "guidance." If you don't know what causes something, you can't treat it. You don't blindly run around doing things and hope it helps. You have to find out the cause to find the cure.

This is exactly the kind of FUD that people are fighting when dealing with crazy CPS zealots.

Edit: If SIDS is suffocating from an obstruction, then call it suffocation by obstruction. But it's not suffocation by obsstruction. The current theory is that it's suffocation due to brain malfunction. Putting a toy in a crib isn't going to cause a brain malfunction.

> The current theory is that it's suffocation due to brain malfunction.

Law requires hazardous chemicals be sprayed on the bed mat to protect(?) the child from fires. Try stuffing your face in an infant mattress and see if you notice the smell.

A lot of medical guidance comes from busybodies who have no ability to perform cost-benefit analysis (e.g. pregnant women and caffeine). SIDS risk is around 0.5 per 1,000. The major cause of the decrease since the 1980s seems to be the decline of smoking. Everything else is noise for something that's already low probability.

Do you have a source for this claim?

References like https://www1.nichd.nih.gov/sts/campaign/science/Pages/backsl... and articles like https://www.npr.org/2011/07/15/137859024/rethinking-sids-man... make it likely that the increase in sleeping children on their back is the bulk of the reduction. And that the fact that blacks are less likely to take that recommendation is the reason why the black community has twice the death rate of whites.

This is something that I have a personal interest in. My nephew died of SIDS months before the recommendation about sleeping positions was reversed back in the early 90s. My sister did not smoke. She did put him to sleep on his stomach.

>A lot of medical guidance...

>busybodies who have no ability to perform cost-benefit analysis

Not just medical guidance. All sorts of rules, laws, regulation and other BS is the result of these people.

SIDS has decreased (~70%) since 1980s, but Accidental Suffocation has increased (perhaps due to improved diagnosis of ASSB vs SIDS of the same underlying events) to become about as prevalent as SIDS.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/e1341.fu...

Ok, sure, but let the parents know instead of calling CPS, right?

Not to mention that calling CPS would probably be a career-limiting move for a babysitter. What parents would want to risk hiring that babysitter after something like that?

There is a difference between a new born and a 7 month old. The latter is extremly unlikly of suffocating on a blanket or a stuffed animal and calling CPS in this case is abhorrent. There is certinaly a step before you call someone to take there kid away

The context is taking their children away from their parents under the pretext that the parents are unfit to raise them. Can we agree that "a professional association of physicians made a recommendation which the parents violated" does not constitute "unfit parent"? SIDS is also increased in babies who sleep in a separate room; presumably we're not condoning robbing everyone who has a nursery of their children.

> The context is taking their children away from their parents under the pretext that the parents are unfit to raise them. Can we agree that "a professional association of physicians made a recommendation which the parents violated" does not constitute "unfit parent"?

Being aware of a parent disregarding widely disseminated recommendations of the medical community on a death risk is certainly reason for a third party to be concerned about fitness. It may not equate to unfitness, which corresponds well to the lack of any CPS action when the report was investigated.

The threshold for reasonsble reporting to a investigative authority should not be certainty of a violation.

(Now, I would expect a babysitter to attempt to resolve this with the parents first.)

> Being aware of a parent disregarding widely disseminated recommendations of the medical community on a death risk is certainly reason for a third party to be concerned about fitness.

Absolutely not. Way over the line.

And driving your kids around in a car raises the risk factor of getting killed with a bumper in their face, but that seems fine. We're completely blind to the relative risks we face and focus on the one in a million when one in a hundred risks are everywhere.

I challenge you to find one documented case of the death of a child, of any age, from any number of stuffed animals up to 5 being allowed in the crib during sleep :)

I once spent a bunch of time chasing references from the AAP and others, and could not find anything like that (because I was trying to decide whether to allow a stuffed animal in the crib with my baby). The stuffed animals seem to just be lumped in to the abstract category of "soft things" but all the cases of kids actually suffocating were from other soft things, most notably soft bedding.

I did see one case of a child dying from having a whole crib full of stuffed animals (so the stuffed animals were effectively bedding), hence the limit of 5 for the challenge.

Even so, the extent of the interaction there should be "that is potentially dangerous, you should stop" -- it's not exactly a strong indicator of being unfit parents.