Safety Series Part 1 of 4: Child Safety 1
April 28, 2009 by dr. lam · 13 Comments
I just got back over the weekend from an intense, reinvigorating weekend in Houston at EO Texas Roundup, which I have attended since its inception the past 3 years. However, this year was the most amazing and rewarding that I have ever experienced with 14 lecturers and back-to-back social events that blew my mind including a yachting adventure and a dinner at the Ferrari dealership along with live bands almost every night including at the House of Blues Foundation Room. Most of the weekend was focused on business growth but Sunday’s sessions were dedicated to personal growth with a theme toward safety. We had some great speakers so I thought I would highlight some of the major themes that I learned that I could pass along to you.
Although I am not a parent yet, I think any parent would be focused on child safety from predators and how do we help our children remain safe. Even if you are not or no longer a parent of a small child, pass this blog along to anyone you know who is and would benefit from it. Who knows maybe we all can save just one life from molestation, abuse, or death.
This is such an important topic that I am pre-empting a larger series coming up next week. Plus, my tenant and buddy Michael Solberg is complaining my blog series are getting too long so before I get very in-depth next week at least I can appeal to him and my many faithful readers who desire a shorter blog series. Child safety is such a huge topic that I will divide it into two parts. Today we will cover some basics and tomorrow we will finish with Internet safety for kids, which is the most favorite fishing place for predators today. If you think your children are safe, they’re not.
Let’s begin with some of the scariest statistics. There are between 600,000 to 800,000 children who are reported missing each year in the United States. 80% are runaways; 10 to 15% are victims of family abductions; 5 to 10% are victims of “non-family or acquaintance” abductions; and only fewer than 1% are victims of random, stranger abductions. So before we talk about how to keep our children away from unknown predators, we first must begin at home. Are our children happy or prone to become a runaway? Once they have run away from home, they can only survive on the streets as prostitutes or drug dealers if they are underage. That is a sad story but a reality. Second, beware of a family member who tries to use a child as a pawn in a family squabble. This is actually the second most common cause of child abduction. One of the big things that I learned is that if you have a family friend or acquaintance who somehow is just too interested in your children compared with you, that may signal a pedophile. Do not put your child in the care of that person. Please reread the last 2 sentences if that is not sufficiently clear. Then reread it again: if someone is just too interested in your children, they may be a pedophile. Only 1% of victims are taken by strangers.
Now let’s focus on the preventable 1%. One thing that I learned was a great mnemonic: SAFE that we should have all of our kids learn and relearn.
Say- Say where you are going and with whom you are going. Always have your kids tell you where they are going.
Alone- Never allow your kids to go anywhere alone. They should always play with friends as there is safety with numbers. If they find themselves alone, encourage them to get into a group so that they are not alone.
Free/Fooling- Don’t let your kids take anything free. ROLE PLAY with them over and over so that they can respond in these situations and know when to recognize them. Most often a predator will ask the child for some kind of help. Tell your child that no adult would ask a child for any help to do anything. Children ask adults for help. Adults do not ask children. Also, never take anything free from an adult: no candies, puppies, balloons, etc.
Escape- Run, yell, and tell. Do not get close to the adult. Do not get into the car. Run and get help from a trusted adult.
One thing I learned from someone I met over the weekend which I would like to give credit to, Amy Power, is to have a code word with your child so that if your child asks the adult what the code word is and the adult does not know it, that adult is unsafe. Nice advice.
If your child becomes missing, do not spend 2 to 3 hours calling your neighbors and friends to see if your child is at their house. Call 911 and get help even outside of the police. It is a known fact that 76% of children are found dead if not found within the first 3 hours. There are ways to get help outside of the police. Police resources are simply not strong enough by themselves. The Amber Alert system was named after Amber Hagerman who was found too late in Texas in 1996 and now has become a part of a nationwide effort to catch predators and save children’s lives. Using an emergency broadcast system, the Amber Alert can be a critical way to participate in helping save others’ children but also yours when the time comes. For more information, contact www.amber-plan.net.
Also, know your neigbhors (www.nsopr.gov, www.sexoffender.com). Frighteningly the average sex offender abuses 117 children BEFORE HIS FIRST ARREST. Make sure that your children role play with you to avoid dangerous situations. Also, be aware of potential sex offenders in your area. Another great tip is make sure you keep up-to-date, clear photos of your child. Many times, the alert goes out with no accurate posting of your child’s photo. In the digital age, that is inexcusable. Know where your children’s medical and dental records are, and keep them in a place that you and your spouse will remember the location. Develop your family’s missing child response plan before you need it. Download the plan at
Tcftm.org/pdfs/missing_child_response_plan.pdf
I am proud of my association with the Collin County Children’s Advocacy Center and will be supporting them at this year’s auction on May 16. For more information on resources if your child is missing, contact the Texas Center for the Missing, and contact them immediately when your child is missing rather than waiting several hours (have this phone # ready: 713.599.0235). I hope none of us ever have this happen to our families. Preparation, training, and knowledge will help us avoid many potential pitfalls that may save our children’s lives, hearts, and bodies. If you have any resources, thoughts, or anything that you can share that could be helpful, please do so in these comments. Again, please share this blog with any friend or family member who has a child under 18 years of age. I believe this is one of the most important blogs that I have ever written.
Rethinking Silicone, Part II
October 6, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Silicone Lip Augmentation, Dallas, Texas
As many of you know, I perform tons of silicone injections for cosmetic purposes, including for lip augmentation, rhinoplasty correction, acne scarring correction, and minor touch ups for small facial deformities. I do not use it in bulk for facial volume but in small droplets built slowly over time. I know there is a fear as to how safe silicone is in the body.
In a previous blog, I talked about how massive studies have reviewed hundreds of thousands of women who have had silicone breast implants across multi-centers and multi-nations and shown through extensive meta-analysis that there is absolutely no causal link with silicone breast implants causing collagen vascular disease, etc. That is why in January 2007, silicone breast implants were placed back on the market. Now, of course, we are talking about cohesive models in which buckets of silicone do not spill out into the body. That is not even what I do for the face. If you want to review my first blog on silicone, click here.
I was in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago lecturing and I heard one lecturer say, “Did you know that you get silicone injected, breathed in and swallowed all the time?” Guess what, I knew that because I had heard that in the past but had forgotten about that pertinent information. What triggered me to write this blog is Emina, my hair-transplant coordinator, was saying to my hair-graft dissection team, “Don’t you like how these blades cut through the tissue because of the nice silicone coating?” And I thought, I better write a blog about how much silicone we actually ingest every day.
Did you know that every needle, knife blade, intravenous catheter is covered with silicone? Did you know medicines contain silicone? Did you know hundreds of medical devices contain silicone? Did you know the air around a copying machine contains silicone? Did you know perfumes contain silicone? Did you know that a diabetic gets approximately 2 to 3 cc of silicone per year injected directly into their bloodstream (from the repeated needle sticks)? That is oftentimes more than what I put into lips, and my droplets are not in the bloodstream but in the lips. Every time you get a needle stick or an iv catheter you get silicone. All of our pipes and water valves that carry our water are coated with silicone so when you drink water you get silicone ingested. Our hairsprays are filled with silicone so you breathe it in as well. Our food is covered with silicone. In fact, a study was performed in normal average human beings after they died and what was found is that every major organ had silicone in it, including our lymph glands and immune systems with no effect on us.
Remember that silicone has been used for cosmetic injections safely for over 40 years. The person I learned my technique from had been doing silicone for over 40 years. Now, obviously you see scary examples of bad silicone every day. I have to fix tons of silicone performed in a non-microdroplet fashion and done with both poor technical skill as well as a bad eye toward beauty and shape.
There are many competing permanent fillers on the market out there in the world with only one other one in the United States, Artefill. You can watch my video on why I do not use that product. I do not want to condemn it but want to say that nothing compares to silicone’s longstanding safety record as a bio-inert product THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE IN YOUR BODY.
Tomorrow we will be exploring the differences of the only two permanent fillers I use: silicone and fat.