9781451656251

New York Timesbestselling author and all-time Jeopardy!champion Ken Jennings delivers a characteristically engaging and surprisingly useful new book, revealing the truth behind all the terrible things our parents used to warn us about. Ken Jennings is here to tell us that mother and father didn't always know best. Yes, all those years you were told not to sit too close to the television (you'll go blind!), or swallow your gum (it stays in your stomach for seven years!), or crack your knuckles (arthritis!) are called into question by our country's leading trivia guru. Jennings separates myth from fact to humorously debunk a wide variety of parental edicts: no swimming after meals, sit up straight, don't talk to strangers, you'll get worms from cookie dough, and so on. Combining the Q&A tradition of Why Do Men Have Nipples?and the anti-helicopter parenting philosophy of The Dangerous Book for Boys,Jennings exposes countless examples of parental wisdom run amuck, armed with medical case histories, scientific findings, and even the occasional experiment on himself (or his kids). Whether you're a parent who wants to know what you can stop worrying about or a kid (of anyage) looking to say, "I told you so," thisis the book you've been waiting for.

Ken Jennings is the author of Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks and Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, about his record-breaking 2004 appearance on the quiz show Jeopardy!, as well as Ken Jenningss Trivia Almanac. He lives outside Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Mindy, and his son, Dylan, and daughter, Caitlin, to whom he gives only the best advice.

Preface	p. xiii
"If You Break Your Leg, Don't Come Running to Me!" (Spring and Summer)
"Run between the raindrops-you won't get so wet!"	p. 3
"Stay away from the windows during a thunderstorm!"	p. 4
"Every day is Children's Day!"	p. 5
"No swimming for an hour after lunch-you'll cramp up!"	p. 6
"Remember, there's a chemical in the pool that turns pee blue-so we'll all know!"	p. 8
"You can still get sunburned on a cloudy day, you know!"	p. 9
"I don't care if we're indoors, I hear thunder. Out of the pool!"	p. 10
"Don't run around barefoot, you'll get worms!"	p. 11
"Was the nail you stepped on rusty? You'll get tetanus!"	p. 13
"Put On a Sweater, I'm Cold!" (Autumn and Winter)
"Don't touch your Halloween candy until we get it checked out!"	p. 17
"Close the damn door! Are you frying to heat the whole outdoors?"	p. 19
"Bundle up or you'll catch a cold!"	p. 21
"Put on a hat-most of your body heat escapes through your head!"	p. 23
"Don't eat snow-it'll make you sick!"	p. 24
"Stay away from the Christmas poinsettia! The leaves are poisonous."	p. 25
"Don't Make Me Get the Other Thermometer!" (Sickness unto Barf)
"Feed a cold, starve a fever!"	p. 29
"I'll bring you some chicken soup, you'll feel better!"	p. 30
"You know what's good for that? Castor oil!"	p. 31
"Don't hold in a sneeze, you'll hurt your ears!"	p. 33
"You're better off catching chicken pox now-go play with your sick cousin!"	p. 34
"Nope, nothing but soda! It'll settle your stomach."	p. 36
"Don't Pick at That!" (Bumps and Bruises)
"You need hydrogen peroxide on that!"	p. 41
"I'll blow on the cut, if II feel better!"	p. 42
Take off the Band-Aid and let the cut air out!"	p. 43
"Big kids don't cry!"	p. 44
"It might be a concussion-we need to make sure you don't fall asleep!"	p. 45
"If your nose is bleeding, don't lean your head back!"	p. 46
"When the scab itches, that means it's getting better!"	p. 47
"Don't you dare pop that blister!"	p. 48
Those are just growing pains!"	p. 49
"Look Both Ways Before You Cross the Street!" (Grievous Bodily Harm)
"Never run with scissors!"	p. 53
"Don't play with plastic bags-you'll suffocate!"	p. 54
"Stand in the middle of the escalator or you might get sucked under!"	p. 56
"Don't talk to strangers!"	p. 57
"Don't drop a coin from here-it'll fall so fast someone could get hurt!"	p. 60
"Watch out for those kiddie drugs that 'pushers' give out near schools!"	p. 61
"If you crack your knuckles, you'll get arthritis!"	p. 63
"Always wear a helmet when you ride a bike!"	p. 64
"Never play around refrigerators-you'll get trapped inside!"	p. 66
"You're too young to lift weights. If II stunt your growth!"	p. 67
"You Don't Know Where That's Been!" (Things Not to Put in Your Mouth)
"Don't eat your boogers, ifs bad for you!"	p. 71
"If you swallow watermelon seeds, they'll grow in your stomach!"	p. 72
Those silica gel packets in pill bottles are poisonous!"	p. 73
"Swallowed gum sits in your stomach undigested for seven years!"	p. 75
"Don't suck helium out of those balloons, it kills brain cells!"	p. 77
"Apple seeds are poisonous!"	p. 79
Thumb sucking is bad for you!"	p. 80
"You'll Eat It and You'll Like It!" (Mealtime Misinformation)
"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!"	p. 85
"Ifs okay, just pick it up and eat it. Five-second rule!"	p. 87
"Eat everything on your plate, there are children starving in Africa!"	p. 88
"Eat your crusts, that's where the vitamins are!"	p. 90
"No snacks, you'll ruin your dinner!"	p. 91
"Dinner is not a race! Chew each bite thirty times!"	p. 92
"No double-dipping, you'll spread germs!"	p. 94
"Stay out of the cookie dough, you'll get worms!"	p. 95
"Stop opening the door and peeking in the oven! All the heat goes out!"	p. 97
"Sugar rots your teeth!"	p. 98
"Finish Your Milk!" (And Other Drinking Problems)
"You need eight glasses of water every day!"	p. 103
"No soda! The sugar always makes you hyper!"	p. 105
"Coffee will stunt your growth!"	p. 106
"ItÆs too hot for milk, if II curdle in your stomach!"	p. 107
"Quit shaking your pop cans, you'll make a mess!"	p. 108
"Don't chew your ice, ifs bad for your teeth!"	p. 110
"I Told You to Go Before We Left the House!" (Bathroom Badgering)
"Put down the lid before you flush! You're spreading bacteria everywhere!"	p. 115
"Wash your hands after you use the bathroom!"	p. 117
"Light a match in there, it'll get rid of the smell!"	p. 118
"Give your teeth a good hard brushing!"	p. 120
"Don't swallow your toothpaste, it's bad for you!"	p. 122
"Make sure you shampoo every day!"	p. 123
"Pee on your athlete's foot in the shower!"	p. 125
"Your Face Will Freeze Like That!" (Looks and Grooming)
"Yuck, get a Q-tip and clean out your ears!"	p. 129
"Brush your hair one hundred times every night before bed!"	p. 131
"If you pick your nose, it gets bigger!"	p. 132
"Wear your retainer or your teeth will get crooked again!"	p. 133
"If you keep wearing lip balm, your lips get 'addicted' to it!"	p. 135
"You're not fat. You're just big-boned!"	p. 136
"Wash behind your ears! You could grow potatoes back there!"	p. 138
"It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye!" (Vision and Supervision)
"Don't cross your eyes or they'll stay like that!"	p. 141
"Don't wear someone else's glasses-ifs bad for your eyes!"	p. 142
"Finish your carrots, they're good for your eyesight!"	p. 143
"Never sneeze with your eyes open-your eyeballs will pop out!"	p. 145
"Ifs too dark to read in here, you'll hurt your eyes!"	p. 147
"You're sitting too close to the TV!"	p. 149
"Don't look in the microwave while ifs running!"	p. 150
"Don't look at the sun, you'll go blind!"	p. 152
"You'll shoot your eye out!"	p. 154
"Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite!" '(The Science of Sleep)
"Don't eat that right before bed, you'll have bad dreams!"	p. 159
"You're yawning, must be bedtime!"	p. 161
"Early to bed, early to rise!"	p. 163
"Never wake a sleepwalker!"	p. 165
ôThis Room Is a Pigsty!" (Kids and Other Animals)
"Don't touch ifs wings, or the butterfly will die!"	p. 169
"Don't pick up that dirty feather!"	p. 170
"Don't feed the dog chocolate!"	p. 171
"Don't give those bones to the dog!"	p. 172
"If you touch that baby bird, its mommy will abandon it!"	p. 173
"Don't feed the ducks!"	p. 174
"ItÆs against the law to kill a praying mantis!"	p. 176
"Quit Eating the Paste!" (School Days)
"Sit up straight, ifs good for your back!"	p. 179
"Don't sniff the Magic Markers!"	p. 180
"This will go down on your permanent record!"	p. 182
'Your first answer is usually the right one!"	p. 184
"Chew on your pencil and you'll get lead poisoning!"	p. 185
"Just ignore bullies and they'll leave you alone!"	p. 186
"Don't draw on your skin, you'll get blood poisoning!"	p. 188
"Kids These Days!" (Technology and Modern Life)
"Keep the fork out of the toaster or you'll get zapped!"	p. 193
"Don't yank the plug out of the wall like that!"	p. 194
"Start saving now and compound interest will make you rich!"	p. 195
"Don't flick the light switches off and on, it wastes money!"	p. 198"
"Don't mix different types of batteries!"	p. 199
"Never run the microwave empty!"	p. 201
"Keep your arms inside the car, thatÆs dangerous!"	p. 202
"Well, Life Isn't Fair!" (The Motivational Mom)
"You are a special little snowflake!"	p. 207
"We only use 10 percent of our brains, you know!"	p. 208
"These are the best years of your life-enjoy them!"	p. 210
"It's okay, even Einstein flunked math!"	p. 211
"Your name just makes you more special!"	p. 213
"If you're mad, just go let off some steam!"	p. 214
"What If Your Friends All Jumped off a Cliff?" (The Awkward Age)
"If you shave there, if II just grow in thicker!"	p. 219
"Chocolate's making your skin break out!"	p. 220
"If you pick your zits, you'll get a brain infection and die!"	p. 222
"You can't use tampons. You're a virgin!"	p. 223
"If you keep touching it, you'll get hairy palms and go blind!"	p. 225
"If you sleep on your stomach, you'll be flat-chested!"	p. 226
"Alcohol kills brain cells!"	p. 227
Acknowledgments	p. 231
Index	p. 233
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Preface

I was sitting in my parents’ kitchen not long ago when my young son, Dylan, came whipping around the corner with a grape Tootsie Pop firmly clamped in his teeth.

“Whoa, slow down!” I said. “What if you tripped and fell on your face? The lollipop stick would get jammed right through the roof of your mouth!”

Dylan’s eyes got wide. “Could thatreallyhappen?”

I had to admit, I had no idea. This was something my mother had told me repeatedly while I was growing up, but it’s not like I’d ever dug into the relevant medical literature or consulted with surgeons. What do you do when a nine-year-old calls your bluff?

“Of course it’s true!” I told him. “Go sit down at the table until you’re done with your lollipop.” Just like with terrorists and bears! You can’t show any doubt or weakness!

I found my mom and asked her to back me up: it’s true about lollipop sticks and horrific puncture wounds, right? She had no idea. “That’s what Grandma used to tell us,” she said. “I think it also happens in a Chaim Potok novel.The Chosen,maybe?”

I was horrified. A fact I’d confidently passed along to my trusting children turned out to be thirdhand rumor confirmed only by anovelist? (A novelist-slash-rabbi, but still. And it turns out the lollipop injury isn’t inThe Chosen,anyway. It’s fromIn the Beginning.) What else had I been inadvertently misleading them about? Washing behind their ears? Chewing with their mouths closed? Was our whole life togethera huge lie?

That’s the dirty secret of parenting: it’s a big game of Telephone stretching back through the centuries and delivering garbled, well-intended medieval bromides to the present. Possible misinformation like the lollipop thing never gets corrected; it just goes into hibernation for a few decades and then jumps out to snare a new generation, like a seventeen-year cicada. Parents find themselves in these factual blind alleys because they have no other resource than the dimly remembered thirty-year-old lectures of their own childhoods.

Until now! In this book, I’ve compiled 125 of the nagging Mom- and Dad-isms that we all grew up with, and then I’ve meticulously researched the scientific evidence behind them. On some, I’m happy to deliver a clear-cut verdict one way or another: either confirming them as “True” or debunking them as “False.” More often, though, the truth falls somewhere in between: true with an “if,” false with a “but.” Some of these parental clichés turn out to be accidentally right for the wrong reason (see “Eat your crusts, that’s where the vitamins are!” on page 90 or “Never wake a sleepwalker!” on page 165). Others are time-tested and unimpeachably sensible . . . but still don’t always hold up well in real life (see “Don’t talk to strangers!” on page 57). So there are plenty of “Mostly False” and “Possibly True” verdicts in here as well.

Much of the gray area is a matter of risk assessment. Human beings, as a rule, are terrible students of probability. As a result, we develop paranoid, nightmare-inducing phobias about the unlikeliest things (plane crashes, strangers kidnapping our kids) while ignoring far more pressing risks (heart disease, car accidents). I’ve used the best statistics available to try to help you gauge the relative risks of different childhood activities, whether that’s going outside barefoot or swallowing gum or running with scissors, but the final decision is always going to be a judgment call—like so many other elements of parenting, an art and not a science.

Take my mom’s lollipop fear, for example. There is a fair bit of medical research on “pediatric oropharyngeal trauma,” which is what doctors call it when kids bash up their mouths on some foreign object. A 2006 study out of Edmonton estimated that fully 1 percent of childhood injuries are oropharyngeal traumas, and another study from Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital found that puncture wounds were indeed common outcomes. Twenty-nine percent of the injuries were serious: a large laceration, or a fistula (eww) or mucosal flap (don’t know what that is, but double eww). Brain damage and death are extremely rare complications, but both have happened.