What should I do if a kid is having a seizure? All about epilepsy

When it comes to childhood epilepsy, no two seizures are exactly alike. Some seizures have the convulsive, jerking movements that most people think of when they imagine epilepsy. But other types of seizures can be subtler, and even possible to miss altogether.

On this episode of Mayo Clinic Kids, we talk to Dr. Anthony Fine, a pediatric neurologist and epileptologist, to help us make sense of this very complicated condition.

Find us online at Mayo Clinic Press for more health and wellness articles, podcasts and books. Do you have feedback, questions or topic suggestions? Email us at mcppodcasts@mayo.edu.

Read the transcript:

Dr. Angela Mattke: Hi! I’m Dr. Angela Mattke, a pediatrician with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and I specialize in helping parents make sense of medical issues. On each episode of “Kids Health Matters,” we talk to different medical experts to get the latest pediatric research and recommendations. This episode: Childhood Epilepsy. If you think you know what a seizure looks like, you may want to think again… and again, and again — because there are lots of different types of seizures. Some are super hard to catch.

Dr. Anthony Fine: Let’s say a 6-year-old boy, Timmy, is not paying attention as well in school, is not performing as well, and so parents get him home from school. Timmy is just not following our instructions. He’s having trouble paying attention. Families will come asking, “Could there be attention deficit disorder going on, or is there something else?”

It’s not uncommon that children, with a certain type of seizure called absent seizures, can be misdiagnosed as having an attention problem. Frequently these present as staring episodes or zoning out episodes. Kids will lose awareness for a few seconds. These are super brief. Many times, if you’re not looking at the kid, you’ll miss it. They’ll be there, not there, and then back to it. They’re not even aware that these are happening, and these can be super frequent. But if these are happening multiple times per day, it can interrupt normal function.

Really the only way we can tell that is by doing a brainwave study called an EEG or electroencephalogram, where wires are glued to the scalp and we measure brainwaves and we can see extra electrical activity that shows risk for seizures or sometimes even capture seizures if they’re happening frequently enough and can make a diagnosis of absence seizures.

Something I hear multiple times per week is, “I didn’t know seizures could look like this.” Even for an epilepsy doctor, I can’t look at a kid who’s having a zoning out episode and say, “Yep, that’s a seizure.” I need additional testing. That’s the hardest thing about seizures that are subtle. I always tell families that’s too much pressure to put on yourself to say, “Oh, I should have caught this sooner.” That’s just too hard.

Dr. Angela Mattke:When it comes to childhood epilepsy, no two seizures are exactly alike. Some seizures have the convulsive, jerking movements that most people think of when they imagine epilepsy. But other types of seizures can be subtler, and even possible to miss altogether. About 1% of the U.S. population has epilepsy, which means they have recurring seizures. But believe it or not, 10% of people will have a seizure at some point in their life — which may or may not lead to an epilepsy diagnosis.

What exactly happens in the brain during a seizure? How can we recognize a seizure when it’s happening? If your kid or another kid you know is having a seizure, what should you do? This episode we’re talking about epilepsy with Dr. Anthony Fine. Anthony is a pediatric neurologist and epileptologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he diagnoses and treats this very complicated condition.Most people have heard of epilepsy, but if you ask someone on the street, they might not be able to define it. So, what is epilepsy?

Dr. Anthony Fine: There’s a lot of confusion, in general, even amongst doctors about what epilepsy is. Epilepsy is a term that we use to refer to someone who has seizures. If you have two or more unprovoked seizures, or you have the risk for having seizures, then technically you have epilepsy. Some people will say, “Nope, I have a seizure disorder. I don’t have epilepsy.” It’s the same thing. It’s just wording. Having two or more seizures that don’t have another cause. It’s not a seizure caused by fever. It’s not caused by head injury. It’s not caused by a brain infection. Then it’s epilepsy.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Do you feel like people will say, “No, I have seizure disorder because there’s a stigma that goes along with the word epilepsy?”

Dr. Anthony Fine: Absolutely.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Why do we think that still is? Did it go back to, like, historical roots?

Dr. Anthony Fine: I think so. Not just historical, but there’s also cultural stigma. But even today, there’s still significant stigma around the world. There are some people who keep it a really closely held secret that they have epilepsy, or even if a family member has epilepsy just because it’s viewed so negatively. Think about when people think of epilepsy, they think about the worst case scenario of, if you have epilepsy, then you can’t have a job. You can’t have independence. That’s not true. But that just keeps getting carried forward and propagated.

Dr. Angela Mattke: I want to come back to something you said at the beginning and I think we need to clarify. You said “unprovoked” seizures. What do we consider a provoked seizure and how is that different from an unprovoked seizure?

Dr. Anthony Fine: A provoked seizure would be something like a febrile seizure. Febrile seizures or a different type of seizure and they’re extremely common kids. And so usually between 6 months and 6 years kids can have seizures with fever. And so those are provoked. So really, they happen in the setting of illness and fever. And that is not considered epilepsy, even if you have lots of febrile seizures.

Other types of provoke seizures would be seizures that are caused by a head injury. If a child falls off of the monkey bars and hits their head and has a seizure, that’s considered a provoked seizure.

If you’re really sick and have an infection around your brain called meningitis and have a seizure that’s considered provoked. If you are really sick with a flu like illness or other illness, having a seizure could potentially be provoked. If you have vomiting diarrhea and your electrolytes become really off. That’s another type of provoked seizure.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Any time there’s any other medical disease or process going on that is probably directly attributable to it, those are provoked. And they aren’t necessarily associated with epilepsy. Let’s demystify a little bit about seizures and epilepsy. What happens in the brain during a seizure?

Dr. Anthony Fine: A seizure is a buildup of abnormal electrical activity. If enough electricity builds up in a certain area or all over and reaches a certain point, it causes a seizure. Seizures that are coming from one particular area reaches a point that it causes symptoms from that area and dysfunction.

For some people, they can still respond a little bit or still interact, depending on where in the brain the activities are coming from. Others, the rest of the brain shuts off. Just because that electrical activity takes over and normal processes kind of stop. There’s this extra electricity that’s happening and it’s producing a seizure. Why do seizures look so different? It really depends on where in the brain this electricity is starting from and spreading to.

Dr. Angela Mattke: That is probably one of the best explanations, honestly, that I’ve heard of someone describing a seizure before. Most of us have probably seen that warning pop up on certain TV shows or when you’re at the movies about strobing lights. Why do strobing lights cause seizures?

Dr. Anthony Fine: Some individuals with epilepsy are at risk for seizures provoked or induced by certain frequencies of light. We call this photo sensitive or light sensitive epilepsies. That happens when certain brain cells or neurons are activated by a certain frequency and it causes them to fire together.

That buildup of electricity happens at a certain frequency of light. It’s not for everyone with epilepsy, but in certain epilepsies, some people may be more likely to have seizures with lights. For children with certain generalized epilepsies where their seizures occur from all over, they may be more at risk for light induced seizures.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Beyond strobing lights, what are some other factors that could trigger seizures or make them more likely to happen in people with epilepsy?

Dr. Anthony Fine: One of the biggest triggers is sleep deprivation. We really talk a lot about getting restorative sleep and restful sleep. Making sure that kids and even adults are getting to bed on time and getting enough sleep, that they’re not getting too much screen time at night. There’s things that you can’t control such as illness definitely, and if you have an illness, you can still have seizures that break through. These are not necessarily febrile seizures, but now they’re seizures in the setting of the illness.

If you have epilepsy, there’s certain medications that can provoke seizures. It’s important to have providers be aware as they’re prescribing certain medications. Usually these are medications taken for mood disorders. Certain very, very strong antibiotics can increase the risk for seizures. Usually it’s for people who are very, very sick for those antibiotics. It’s not a common situation. Then other situations are stress. If you think about it, what are the big triggers? Sleep deprivation is a stress on the body. Illness is a stress on the body, but any kind of stress.

It just increases that risk for a breakthrough seizure. Whether it’s emotional or physical, and there’s only so much you can sometimes do about stress, but trying to identify some stressful things and if you can reduce that exposure to stress, or how you handle stress can sometimes help.

Dr. Angela Mattke: As pediatricians, we want to make families aware that we don’t want to eliminate all stress. Some stress is good and kids developing distress tolerance is also a really important thing too, but it’s really a balance in people that have epilepsy and those harmful types of stressors, and seeing how we can negate those.

Dr. Anthony Fine: Absolutely. Really not so much avoidance of stressors, but managing those stressors is the most important thing.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Although, I would love to avoid all stress. That would be amazing.

Dr. Anthony Fine: That would be amazing. I totally agree.

Dr. Angela Mattke: We’re talking right now about epilepsy in kids, but is there a difference between epilepsy in kids and epilepsy in adults in terms of what it looks like and how it affects their brain.

Dr. Anthony Fine: Something that we commonly will say in the pediatric epilepsy world, and just in general in pediatrics, is that children are not small adults.

Dr. Angela Mattke: I love it.

Dr. Anthony Fine: It’s really important to realize that there are some things that, sure, can apply to pediatric epilepsy that are true for adults, but when thinking about kids versus adults we need to be very cautious with our medication choices.

Kids are very, very sensitive to medication side effects. There are certain medications that we use in adults or doses that are used in adults that we cannot use in kids. Just because the effects of medication on the developing brain are very different compared to the adult brain, where all those pathways are formed.

Thinking about learning and development. Just that alone would impact negatively on cognition and level of alertness. Seizures can be very different in kids versus adults. Children can have a lot more different presentations of seizures.

For adults, the more common seizure types are seizures coming from the temporal lobe, versus children, who can have seizures that are generalized or focal coming from lots of different areas or coming from all over. It’s really not as simple. Of course there are very complicated adult epilepsy patients as well. Sometimes managing children with epilepsy can be a little bit more complicated.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Did you just throw shade on the adult epileptologist?

Dr. Anthony Fine: A little bit.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Cute. You’re like, my job is harder than yours. I love it.

Dr. Angela Mattke: At its most basic level, an epilepsy diagnosis means someone has had two or more unprovoked seizures. Unprovoked – meaning that there’s not another medical condition or external factor, like a fever or head injury, that could have caused the seizure.

A seizure itself is a buildup of electricity in the brain. What a seizure looks like depends on where in the brain it occurs and how all that electricity builds up. For some people, strobing lights can lead to this electrical buildup. For others, lack of sleep, certain medications, stress, or an illness in someone who already has epilepsy could trigger a seizure. Now that we know the basics, let’s dig into the causes and risks.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Do we know what causes epilepsy?

Dr. Anthony Fine: This is a very hard answer for families to hear, especially when families are coming to Mayo for a 4th opinion, and they want to know the why—but about half of the time, 50 percent of the time, we don’t have a clear answer, at least not right now. We may not find an answer. Many times we assume that there’s a genetic cause, and the important part is to explain that genetics doesn’t necessarily mean that the cause is inherited. It didn’t come from mom or dad, but it’s a new change in a gene that is causing epilepsy. That’s usually the most common cause for epilepsy.

Other causes that we see are structural. There could be lots of different reasons for a structural cause in the brain, whether it is related to something that happened as the brain was developing before a baby was born, or something that happened during delivery or right after birth, or in childhood, if there was a head injury, or a stroke, or meningitis or infection. Other causes are less common, but things like, autoimmune disorders and then metabolic disorders where the body has trouble breaking down certain things like proteins or carbohydrates or fats and they can get seizures, but again, really uncommon.

Genetic and structural are the more common reasons and sometimes there’s more than one. You can have a structural cause due to a genetic reason. It can be complicated. Sometimes we really think we know the underlying reason. We could say this is very clearly a genetic epilepsy, but we can’t identify the true reason, what gene is causing this. That could be frustrating, too.

Dr. Angela Mattke: I think as parents there’s a lot of guilt. We’re always worried that it was something that we did to cause it. I think that’s why sometimes parents are searching for those answers too because they want to make sure it wasn’t something they did. Do you ever like to address that with parents in the room?

Dr. Anthony Fine: Absolutely. I think it’s really important, especially when you are giving any kind of diagnosis, particularly if you are discussing something with the word genetic, to take a step back and tell the parents, “This has nothing to do with anything that comes from you. This is something that just happened.” In many cases, even if this was a change that was inherited, this is usually just something that happens. I try to recognize that, because no matter what, there’s going to be guilt and just someone saying, “You didn’t cause this, this just happens.”

Dr. Angela Mattke: I think even people in medicine need to hear that too even though they probably know that. Epilepsy is known for having a broad range of seizure types. What’s the range of physical symptoms that someone could have during a seizure?

Dr. Anthony Fine: I tell families that seizures can look like anything and the reason being is it really just depends on where in the brain seizures are coming from. Some people can have seizures that don’t manifest as physical symptoms, but are maybe more sensory. They might have spots in their vision or colored dots or squiggly lines. Someone might feel dizzy or off balance and feel more distortions.

But there’s some people where you can see what they’re having and they might have jerking of arms or legs or their whole body. Again, going back to Timmy with his absent seizures, it might just look like staring and unresponsiveness for a few seconds, other people might have unresponsiveness for a few minutes.

It really depends on where that electricity is building up, if it’s happening in one spot or all over and what part of the brain is affected. It can be unique for each person. But usually, depending on where in the brain it’s happening, it kind of fits certain patterns.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Some kids can sense when they’re going to have a seizure. What are some examples of warning signs kids experience?

Dr. Anthony Fine: When people can sense or get a warning, we call that an aura. Usually those are mainly sensory. It could be really any kind of sensation. More common warning signs are smells and so someone might smell something funny. Something might smell bad or like something burning.

They might get a funny taste in their mouth. Something bitter or metallic. Some kids might feel tingling. If they have more motor seizures, they might get tingling in their arm before they start jerking. Some kids might again have visual symptoms. They might see things before a seizure that they know are not there.

Some people might hear something. They might hear a song or a funny sound. Some people will feel something funny in their stomach, and so particularly with seizures that might start in the temporal lobe. On the side of the head they might feel a funny feeling like if you’re on a roller coaster, that feeling in your stomach as your stomach kind of rises up as you’re going down, they might feel that right before a seizure. That might be their warning sign that a seizure is coming. It could be pretty different. But usually it involves some sort of sensation.

Dr. Angela Mattke: When we think about controlling seizures with medications and other modalities, is the underlying reason why we want to control seizures because seizures do something harmful to the brain, or is it more that we’re concerned about the lapse in consciousness or physical control leading to kids being hurt by their surroundings?

Dr. Anthony Fine: For most kids if they’re having brief seizures, even if they’re having pretty frequent brief seizures, seizures themselves are not harmful to the brain. It’s really environmentally what’s around them, if they’re going to fall down with a seizure or get injured. But other things to think about are what happens to the body during a seizure? If someone’s having some kind of convulsive seizure, if that convulsion goes on for a long time, there’s other changes in the body that happen. Changes in breathing.

It’s not uncommon if someone’s having a lot of convulsive activity, they may throw up. That increases the risk that someone can choke and vomit could go into the lungs. There’s lots of risks that go on with long seizures that then affect the rest of the body and just increase the risks for bigger and longer seizures. Those are big concerns about the overall risk to the body. Then subsequent and secondary risk of the brain.

Dr. Angela Mattke: What are the risks kids face even if their epilepsy is relatively well managed?

Dr. Anthony Fine: Those risks that are seen with epilepsy, we call those comorbidities. We do know that children with epilepsy or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), are at higher risk for attention problems. There’s also a higher risk of depression and anxiety in kids with epilepsy. It’s really important to screen for that and for doctors and parents to make sure that mood isn’t affected. Another thing is that our medications that we use for seizures can also affect mood. Making sure that it’s not medication related that’s affecting mood, but just watching closely.

Other things that kids with epilepsy are at risk for are differences in learning. Sometimes that could be seizure-related. If seizures are interfering with the ability to focus it could also be medication related, or it could just be due to changes in the brain from risk for seizures. We always discuss with families, making sure kids are evaluated, making sure that they have resources, whether they need IEP or a 504 plan for school, just because there can be learning differences and learning disorders and kids with epilepsy.

Dr. Angela Mattke: There’s also a phenomenon called SUDEP. What is that and how does that play into the risks associated with epilepsy in children?

Dr. Anthony Fine: SUDEP is an extremely rare, but devastating complication of epilepsy. It’s an acronym. It stands for Sudden Unexplained or Unexpected Death in Epilepsy. It happens in one in about 4, 000 children per year, and it’s usually in kids with really difficult to control seizures, particularly convulsive seizures that are happening frequently. We don’t really know what causes SUDEP, but it’s usually assumed that there was a seizure that was unwitnessed and it led to a change in breathing or heart rate that led to death.

Many times a child is found and they have passed away overnight, and we assume that it’s related to a seizure. There’s a lot of research into SUDEP and trying to prevent SUDEP, and things that we know to prevent SUDEP is just getting better seizure control. Trying to make sure that kids are on anti-seizure medication when they need to be. Other things that can help are monitoring of some sort. Monitoring devices or having someone close by to monitor. But it’s something that really can’t explain why or how it happens.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Going beyond the medical risks, how does epilepsy impact a kid’s quality of life? Like being able to go to school, play with friends, swim in a pool, etc?

Dr. Anthony Fine: It can definitely impact quality of life there’s a number of reasons why, part of it may be sometimes it’s doctors who are too restrictive. We try not to be. Our practice here is we try not to limit activities as much as possible. Big things that we talk about are water safety. Taking showers instead of baths. Safety. You can swim, but there should be an adult within arm’s reach watching the child at all times. Children should not be cleaning the gutters.

No cooking unsupervised, or if no one else is home. Otherwise, there’s really not a lot of activity restrictions that we place that wouldn’t be otherwise recommendations from a general pediatrician.Wear your helmet while riding your bike. We really try not to limit activities. Sometimes schools will say, “Oh, if you have seizures or epilepsy, you shouldn’t do this.”

We say, “No, Timmy can play basketball. There’s no reason he can’t.” I think it’s really important to advocate for your patients to say they can be active and that they can participate in sports or afterschool programs and to let families know that just because your child has a diagnosis of epilepsy it doesn’t change what they should be able to do or can’t do. They should not limit them or tell them that they can’t do something.

Dr. Anthony Fine: Half the time, epilepsy doesn’t have a clear cause in kids. But when there is a suspected cause, it’s usually genetic or structural. Seizures themselves look really different from kid to kid. Again, that depends on where seizures are happening in the brain. Some kids will also be able to sense when a seizure is coming on, like through a smell, taste, or feeling.

For the most part, seizures don’t seem to be harmful to the brain itself. But the bigger risks are if a kid can get hurt by their surroundings. Like falling down in a dangerous place. Or if they breathe in a way that isn’t healthy during a seizure.

With well-managed epilepsy, kids still get to be kids. There are some extra concerns around water safety and cooking, but for the most part, kids with epilepsy live full, healthy lives. Let’s talk more about the treatments and practices we use to make that possible.

Dr. Angela Mattke: What are some of the treatments for epilepsy?

Dr. Anthony Fine: Our anti seizure medications, our 1st line treatments. Most children with epilepsy will need anti seizure medication to reduce the risk of additional seizures.

The goal of anti-seizure medication is to reduce further seizures and to allow kids to do everything they want to do and improve quality of life because if you’re having frequent seizures, you just can’t live life. I think that it’s important to communicate to families that medication is not here as a punishment. It’s really to just allow life to happen and reduce seizures that will interrupt life.

Beyond anti-seizure medication, there’s dietary therapy. There’s a lot out there now on ketogenic diet, but ketogenic diet started for epilepsy in the early 1900s and it is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. It’s the strictest diet that we’ll use and it is monitored by a doctor and a dietitian and it’s considered medical nutritional therapy.

Kids have to be very strict on the ketogenic diet. Because if they cheat and have candy, they can have breakthrough seizures. This is stricter than a lot of the keto products that you see out there. Those are actually not true ketogenic. Not in terms of a ketogenic diet for epilepsy.

Less restrictive would be a modified Atkins diet or low glycemic index diet, which some children will have success on as well. Then there’s surgical therapies. The least invasive surgical therapies are neurostimulators, devices that are implanted in the body to reduce seizures. These don’t cure seizures, but they can reduce seizures.

One of them is called a Vagus Nerve Stimulator or VNS. This is a battery pack that’s implanted in the chest and wires go up the neck to the vagus nerve. More invasive would be a deep brain stimulator where electrodes are placed in the brain. Again, battery pack in the chest. There’s something called RNS or Responsive Neurostimulation where there’s again, electrodes in the brain and the battery pack is actually implanted in the skull. DBS and RNS are right now, not FDA approved in pediatrics, but we do use them off label.

Okay, so it’s FDA approved for something else, but you’re using it for a different purpose than it was approved for. Then, in some children who have seizures, who are not responsive to medication or diet, surgery might be an option if seizures are coming from one particular area that is not in a very important brain area.

Dr. Angela Mattke: How do you go about deciding which treatment is best for which kid?

Dr. Anthony Fine: Looking at the types of seizures they’re having. Certain medications may be better for certain seizure types. If you’re having focal versus generalized seizures, there might be one medication versus another. Looking at if they’re on any other medications, looking at interactions. If they have any other medical problems, making sure that there’s not going to be any issues with a certain medication.

Then unfortunately there’s quite a bit of trial and error when it comes to anti-seizure medications because you never know how someone’s going to respond and if they’re going to respond poorly in terms of side effects, or if they’re going to have a good response and seizures are going to get better with the medication.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Is it possible to cure childhood epilepsy, or is this really going to be a lifelong condition that requires ongoing active management through adulthood?

Dr. Anthony Fine: With childhood onset epilepsy, depending on the seizure types, and when seizures start, some kids can outgrow their epilepsy. In kids like Timmy with absence seizures, he has maybe a 50 percent chance of outgrowing his epilepsy. But there’s some kids who may have a much lower chance, maybe a 20 to 30 percent chance of outgrowing their epilepsy by age 18.

It really depends on the type of seizures that they have and where the seizures are coming from and the cause. If there’s a structural cause or a genetic cause, they’re less likely to outgrow it versus if we can’t figure out the cause there’s a higher likelihood. It just depends.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Let’s say your kid doesn’t have epilepsy, but maybe a kid in their classroom or one of your child’s friends has epilepsy. What should all parents know about childhood epilepsy?

Dr. Anthony Fine: It’s important for parents, especially if you are aware that someone within your child’s friend group or classroom has epilepsy, to know just some basics of seizure safety: what to do during a seizure, what not to do. There’s a common misconception that you should put something in someone’s mouth if they’re having a seizure.

You should not do that. If someone is having a convulsive seizure, they’re going to clench their jaw and bite down. If you put something in their mouth, they might break their teeth. If you put your fingers in someone’s mouth, they’re going to bite down hard and someone could get broken fingers. It’s really unlikely that someone’s going to swallow their tongue. If you’re getting someone onto their side, it’s just not going to happen.

You should definitely place someone on their side if they’re having a seizure, if they’re down on the ground. If they’re having a convulsive seizure, get them off their back, onto their side. If they have loss of awareness, get them to somewhere safe where they’re not going to fall, not going to get injured.

Then really just making sure that they stay safe. Talk to them, talk them through what’s happening. We don’t know when someone doesn’t have awareness, if they can hear. But I think providing some comfort is important because there’s probably some that gets through and helps.

Staying calm is really important, and then so is knowing what their rescue plan is. What needs to be done? Do they have a rescue plan? Do they need to get special medication to stop a seizure if it’s going on for a certain period of time?

Looking for some sort of medical alert bracelet or necklace is good if someone is having a seizure and you’re not sure. Checking for some sort of medical alert tag would be recommended.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Is it helpful to always time the seizure or to video it?

Dr. Anthony Fine: If you are concerned your child is having a seizure, video is absolutely very helpful because it is very hard to describe seizures. Then thinking back, your memory during a stressful situation does not work well. There are studies that show people’s recall is just not great. Video is always helpful. Timing something is very helpful. I think that’s a great idea.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Thank you so much for joining us today, Anthony, this was fantastic.

Dr. Anthony Fine: Happy to join. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Angela Mattke: Medications are the go-to approach for treating epilepsy. Because each kid’s epilepsy is unique, finding the right medication can take some trial and error. But the type of seizures will often give doctors a place to start. If medication doesn’t work, special diets like a ketogenic diet can help, or even surgical therapies. Some kids may even ultimately outgrow their epilepsy.

If your kid or another kid is having a seizure, the best thing you can do is stay calm, get them to a safe place, and put them on their side. Do not put anything in their mouth. If you don’t know the kid’s condition, check to see if they have a medical alert tag, usually a bracelet or necklace, with more information. If you’re quick enough on your feet to also take a video, that can be helpful information for doctors.

That’s all for “Childhood Epilepsy.” If your kid has something else going on or you have a topic suggestion, send us an email at mcppodcasts@mayo.edu or leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272, and we’ll see if we can help you out.

Please remember, this podcast cannot provide individual medical advice, and the discussion presented here cannot replace a one-on-one consultation with a medical professional. Plus, when’s the last time you checked how tall you are? Maybe you’ve grown! Thanks for listening! 

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