Green Mountain Pediatrics

10/21/2026

10/07/2026

Children are more likely to learn, thrive and develop appropriately when attending school in-person, alongside their peers. As classrooms reopen, families can take steps to help keep students healthy and in school. Find tips here.

10/03/2026

So a researcher asked an AI teddy bear where to find a knife.

It told them.

Then it explained how to light a match.

I wish I were making this up. U.S. PIRG Education Fund bought a handful of these AI chatbot toys, the talking plushies and little robots, and tested them. Every one they tested pointed them to dangerous stuff in the house. Plastic bags, matches, knives. Two of them got into sexually explicit topics once the conversation dragged on long enough. (The guardrails were there. They just wore down over time. Which, if you've ever watched a 6-year-old talk to a stuffed animal, is basically the whole use case.)

Common Sense Media did their own testing in January and found about 1 in 4 answers weren't appropriate for kids. 27%, if you want the exact number. Their advice is no AI toys at all for kids 5 and under, and a lot of caution from 6 to 12. I’m advising the same!

Nearly half of the parents they surveyed had bought one or were thinking about it.

And honestly, I sort of understand why. A toy that handles the 400th "why" of the day so you don't have to. That remembers your kid's name. That never gets short with them because it's 6pm and dinner's burning. When you're exhausted, that sounds like help.

It's just not the kind of help it looks like.

Quick update on where the law is.

California signed SB 867 on September 10. It's the first state to pause sales of toys with AI companion chatbots for kids under 16, for four years. Great, right?

Except it doesn't start until January 1, 2027. So for holiday gifts, birthdays, all of it this year, they're still for sale. In California and basically everywhere else.

Pennsylvania held a hearing Monday on HB 2637, which would pause them for kids under 14 for three years. One of the people who testified, Dr. Dana Suskind (a pediatric surgeon and child development researcher at the University of Chicago), said something I haven't been able to shake. When adults hand their thinking over to AI, we call it brain rot. For little kids she called it brain stunting, because they never build the skill to begin with.

I've worked in pediatric emergency medicine for over 15 years. Most of the kids I see didn't do anything exotic. They found the lighter. Or the knife. Or grandma's pills on the nightstand. We put so much energy into making those things hard to reach, and now there's a toy that'll give directions.

The listening part bugs me too. One of the toys PIRG tested listens to everything around it whenever it's on. Another told testers their secrets were safe with it, while the company's privacy policy says it can share data with third parties and hang on to biometric info for up to 3 years. So... not that safe.

If you're shopping this year, here's what I'd actually do:

Turn the box over and look for words like AI, ChatGPT, chatbot, "talks back," or "learns your child."

Figure out how it listens. Do you push a button, does it wait for a wake word, or is it just always on?

See if you can read full transcripts of what your kid says to it, and whether you can really turn it off. PIRG didn't find one toy that had every control it should.

Skim the privacy policy. If it won't tell you who gets your kid's voice, skip it.

Still not sure? Get the one that doesn't need Wi-Fi.

Your kid doesn't need a toy that talks back. They need somebody down on the floor with them, and most days that's you.

📌 Please share this with the grandparents, aunts, and uncles who are already making lists, save it for when you start shopping, and tell me in the comments if one of these has already made it into your house 🧸

🎁

Resources:
PIRG, The risks of AI toys for kids: https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/ai-toys/
Common Sense Media, AI toys risk assessment: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ai-ratings/ai-toys
California SB 867, Sen. Padilla: https://sd18.senate.ca.gov/news/first-nation-ai-toy-moratorium-signed-law

09/30/2026

https://support.apple.com/guide/aap-apple/welcome/web

A guide for families on building healthy habits with Apple devices, from the first conversation to the settings that support them.

09/23/2026

Let's talk about amber teething necklaces

Teething sucks!

Your baby is miserable, you're exhausted, and the internet is full of people swearing amber necklaces are magic. So let's be real about them for a sec. 👇

They don't work. Like, not at all!

The pitch is that your baby's body heat melts a little succinic acid out of the amber beads, it soaks through the skin, and… poof… the pain is gone.

Cute story. Here's where it falls apart:

🔥 The beads don't actually release succinic acid at body temperature. You'd basically have to cook them. Your baby would need to be ≥392° F for this substance to POSSIBLY be released, and if that happens you have bigger problems than teething!

🚫 Even if they did release succinic acid, it doesn't absorb through skin.

💤 And even if it *somehow* got in, it wouldn't do anything for pain anyway.

So yeah… three strikes.

"But it worked for us!"

I totally get why it may seem that way. Teething pain comes and goes on its own all day long. If your baby happened to feel better while wearing the necklace, that's just teething being teething, not the beads.

And here's the part that actually matters most ⚠️

Not only does it not work, but more importantly, these things ARE NOT SAFE.

🎗️ STRANGULATION!!!
Anything around a baby's neck can tighten or snag. That's the whole reason pediatric experts say don't. And yes, it can even happen while they’re being “supervised” (and to be real, NO ONE has their eyeballs on their kid 100% of the time)

🫢 CHOKING!!!
String breaks, tiny beads go everywhere, baby puts one in their mouth. You can see where this goes.

Bottom line: nothing goes around a baby's neck. Not necklaces, not bracelets, not "just for a minute," not during naps. Not ever.

What actually helps teething 😌

❄️ A **chilled** (not frozen) teething ring or a clean, damp washcloth
👐 Rub their gums with a clean finger. Sounds too simple, works surprisingly well
💊 If they're really hurting, ask about acetaminophen dosed for their weight
🙅 Skip the benzocaine numbing gels! They can cause a genuinely dangerous blood problem in babies

One last thing 💬

Amber necklaces don't fix teething, and they can actually hurt your kid. They can even kill them!

If you know a parent who's about to buy one, send them this. 💛

And when in doubt, your pediatrician wants what’s best for your baby, just like you, so ask them.

09/18/2026

I recently watched a video where a mom spoke about how her son had been talking to ChatGPT about wanting to die. For six weeks. She checked his phone every single night. Never once thought to look at his AI apps. She thought he only used that for silly questions and help with homework.

She didn’t know it could be used in the way he was using it. Many parents don’t.

Some facts: 86% of kids ages 9 to 17 are using AI right now. A quarter of them every day. Common Sense Media ran the numbers this year and almost half, 44%, said a parent has never once talked to them about using it safely.

Not "we didn't cover everything." Never. Not one conversation.

I keep thinking about two boys. Adam Raine, 16, died by su***de after months of talking to ChatGPT. His parents are suing OpenAI now, saying the bot engaged with his suicidal thoughts instead of stopping the conversation. OpenAI says that's not what happened. The case is still working through court.

Then there's Luca Cella Walker. Also 16. Also gone. The UK inquiry into his death found he'd been asking ChatGPT about su***de beforehand.

Nearly three out of four teens have used an AI companion. Half of them keep coming back. A third have picked the bot over an actual human being when something serious was going on in their life.

I don't think most parents are failing here. I think most parents don't know there's anything to check. You're watching screen time. You're watching who they text. Nobody told you to watch what they're confiding in a chatbot at 11pm, because five years ago that wasn't even a category of danger.

It is now.

OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT for Teens last month with parental controls and quiet hours built in. That’s great. But a setting on someone else's app is never going to replace you asking your own kid a direct question.

So ask one tonight. Not "were you on your phone too much." Ask if they use AI and ask what they actually use it for. Ask if it's ever said something back that felt off.

You might be surprised by the answer. You might not like it. Ask anyway.

📎 Common Sense Media, AI Use by Tweens and Teens 2026: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/a-comprehensive-report-on-teens-tweens-and-ai
📎 APA, Your Teen Turned to AI Instead of You: https://www.apa.org/topics/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning/teens-chatbots-parents
📎 TechCrunch, OpenAI Launches ChatGPT for Teens: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/18/openai-launches-a-safer-chatgpt-for-teens-years-after-teens-started-using-it/
📎 https://theconversation.com/teens-are-turning-to-ai-chatbots-for-emotional-support-heres-how-to-keep-kids-safe-283651

08/14/2026

E-bike crashes are now the leading cause of injury for school-aged children in emergency rooms. Some of these injuries are very similar to injuries seen in motorcycle crashes, like traumatic brain injuries, broken bones and internal chest or abdominal injuries. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends that children under the age of 12 should not ride e-bikes. Learn more about e-bike safety: https://bit.ly/3RSvmwF

07/20/2026

A normal Thursday morning in Sumter, South Carolina ended with a mother's scream in her own front yard.

Geoffrey Hauptman kissed his wife goodbye and left for work. Minutes later, he called Betsy and told her to lock the doors. Someone was passed out in the yard. He was calling 911.

Betsy went room to room checking on their six children. She found five.

She ran to the front door to tell her husband Timothy was missing. Geoffrey looked at her. He shook his head. And she screamed.

Timothy Barnett, 13 years old, was lying in the front yard. He was gone.

Security footage from the night before showed Timothy sitting alone in the family car for nearly two hours, frantically scrolling through his phone in the dark. Nobody knew why. Not yet.

Police took his phone and his school Chromebook. Timothy had changed his passcode just before he died, and it took months to crack it.

Eleven weeks passed with no answers. Betsy called investigators twice a week. She drove to the station and refused to leave until someone spoke to her.

Then the truth surfaced.

A stranger with a New York area code had been contacting Timothy through a secret second Snapchat account. That stranger had an explicit photo of Timothy and was demanding $35 every single day to keep it from being posted online.

One of Timothy's last messages read: "Please. I am just a child."

He was a seventh-grade honors student at Alice Drive Middle School. He played baseball, held a yellow belt in karate, and practiced saxophone. His mother said he used to wake up every morning and brew her coffee before she even asked.

He left behind dozens of su***de notes addressed to the people he loved.

Betsy Hauptman has since filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Snapchat, alleging the platform was designed in a way that made her son easy prey. The case is now part of a massive federal consolidation involving more than 600 lawsuits against social media companies.

The FBI has received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion targeting minors. Most victims are young boys. Most of them suffer in silence because they are too ashamed to tell anyone.

Timothy never told a soul.

If your child uses Snapchat or any social media platform, have the conversation tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight.

And please share this post. Every parent who sees it is one more family that might catch this before it is too late.

06/29/2026

06/26/2026

There is a form of online predation happening right now that most parents have never heard of. It has a name: sadistic online exploitation. And Thorn's brand new 2026 research report is sounding a very loud alarm.

This isn't grooming in the traditional sense. This isn't a 45-year-old man sending a kid a friend request. This is something different. Something faster. Something more brutal.

These are online networks, built and run largely by other adolescents, where harm IS the currency. Where hurting yourself, hurting your sibling, hurting a pet, or filming the whole thing gets you STATUS. Where belonging requires escalation. And where by the time a child is visibly in crisis, they have often already been in the network for weeks or months.

Thorn interviewed more than 30 practitioners across 8 countries for this report. The FBI has now opened more than 350 investigations across all of its field offices. In 2024, NCMEC's CyberTipline received over 1,300 reports tied to these violent online groups, a more than 200% increase over the prior year. And Thorn now anticipates those numbers will have at LEAST doubled by the time 2025 data is released.

Let that sink in.

These networks operate on the platforms your kids are already using. Discord. Instagram. Roblox. Snapchat. TikTok. They don't need to lure kids somewhere new. They find them where they already are.

📊 Here is what Thorn found about who is most at risk:

Adolescents. Full stop. The developmental stage itself is the risk factor. Kids this age are wired for belonging, for status, for peer approval. These networks weaponize every single one of those normal, healthy drives. Practitioners in this study also noted higher rates of underlying vulnerabilities in youth involved in these networks: anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorder, borderline personality disorder. Not because these kids are broken. But because they are being targeted.

⚠️ The warning signs Thorn says parents need to watch for:

Sudden secrecy around devices or online activity

Unexplained new platforms, apps, or devices

Covering specific body parts, unexplained cuts, scars in patterns or symbols

Wounds that look like words or names carved into skin (this is called "fansigning" and it is a direct demand from these groups)

Disproportionate rage or panic when devices are taken away

References to "tasks" they have to do online

Changes in eating, sleeping, hygiene

Harming or unexplained fear in family pets

Being "swatted" (police showing up to your home based on a fake call)

These signs don't require all being present at once. Any one of them warrants a calm, direct conversation.

✅ What you can do RIGHT NOW:

Talk to your kids about these networks by name. Awareness is protection.

Ask open questions about their online friendships, not yes/no questions.

Know the platforms they're on and understand how those platforms work.

Trust your gut. If something feels off, it is worth a conversation.

If you believe your child is involved, contact the NCMEC CyberTipline and local law enforcement immediately.

📌 Resources:
Thorn 2026 SOE Report:https://info.thorn.org/hubfs/Research/Thorn_SOEResponse_Report_2026.pdf
NCMEC CyberTipline (report here): https://www.cybertipline.org
Thorn research library: https://www.thorn.org/research/library/sadistic-online-exploitation/

This is not about panicking. It's about knowing. Share this with every parent you know.