How to determine if a kids injury is serious or not
offer them “medicinal chocolate” if they stop crying it’s fine if they carry on crying/refuse the chocolate then it’s serious
From age two apparently^^
Oh wow I never heard this one.
German edition: offer the kid to blow away the pain. If it’s better afterwards it’s okay, if they refuse or still screaming it’s serious
Also a lot healthier than giving your kid chocolate everytime they cry tbh
It’s not everytime they cry it’s only if they get injured and you’re unsure if it’s serious because they are screaming but you can’t tell if they are overreacting or not
For things that are clearly a minor bump we give kisses instead
And before anyone thinks if a kid is screaming it’s not an over reaction
My kid fell off their bike and skinned their knee. Just skinned it that’s all and they went into full on scream/crying hysterical because it was bleeding and they hadn’t had an injury where they bled within their memory
It wasn’t so much the pain as the blood that made them hysterical.
In that case we could see it wasn’t serious but the chocolate helped them calm down and then I got them to tell me about Terraria until they were calm and their wound was dressed
It was absolutely an overreaction to a skinned knee but it was also an understandable one
Kids don’t have experience or pain tolerance we do and sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s something that requires a trip to the hospital or not
Kids have to be TAUGHT how to self-regulate. Kids aren’t born knowing that being hurt, scared, or angry doesn’t literally mean they aren’t in life-threatening danger. As infants, our threat response system isn’t good at telling the difference between “my caretaker is in the bathroom peeing” and “I have been abandoned for the wolves to eat”, or between “I fell and bonked my head” and “I am being actively mauled by a mountain lion”.
Because in both events, a child’s stress response system initially responds the same way to both scenarios. They produce roughly the same levels of stress hormones for both events. It’s only after hundreds, sometimes thousands, of repetitions of “Being hungry and unattended for a little bit ends with someone coming to feed me” or “experiencing pain does not mean I am about to die” that children’s stress systems begin to learn what’s worth freaking out about, and what’s not.
So little kids who are past infancy often have the brain wiring that can go, “Okay, this is not an emergency, I don’t need to freak out,” but it doesn’t kick in very naturally when they’re hurt or scared. They need to be reminded that it exists by the attention of a trusted adult, or the reminder of physical actions or objects (food, comfort objects, kisses) of all the times it’s been okay before.
my parents’ line was “are you hurt, or are you scared?”
because sometimes you’re just kinda shocked from unexpectedly falling over or running into the door or whatever. but asking the question means you gotta stop and look at the thing you’re feeling and give it a name, something i still need prompting for to this day sometimes. but once the feeling has a name we can figure out what to do with it, and also the slow-down-and-find-a-word has lowered the shock level.
“both” is an acceptable answer, btw.
if they’re not gushing blood or obviously have a broken bone, two things that (in my personal experience working with 5-12 year old kids, anyway) are helpful:
-name their feelings, as mentioned above. “Wow, that looked like a nasty fall! I bet that hurt, let’s see what we can do to fix it” or “Oh man, it’s really scary to fall off the swings, huh?” Keep your tone calm, because kids tend to look to the adult to see how they should be reacting.
-incorporate learning about their body/how their body works with figuring out how serious the injury is. “Wow, you fell down really hard! Can you point to where it hurts the most?” or “Let’s check your hand to see how it got hurt. Can you open and close your hand in a fist? That’s good, if your fingers can still bend then it means they’re not broken!” or “I see your knee is really red where you scraped it on the sidewalk, did you know that’s because when you get hurt, your body sends more blood to the owie to help fix it?” This distracts them and if it’s not a serious injury, 99% of the time distraction and a bandaid or ice pack is all they’ll need.
(Things to NOT do, btw: “you’re okay”/“you’re fine”/“that’s not that bad” I hope I don’t need to explain why)
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Gay Ryan 