ineffectualdemon

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

nonbinaryparent

From age two apparently^^

shirleycarlton

Oh wow I never heard this one.

official-90er-kind

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

itscatconny

Also a lot healthier than giving your kid chocolate everytime they cry tbh

ineffectualdemon

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

ineffectualdemon

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

yatahisofficiallyridiculous

Kids don’t have experience or pain tolerance we do

This is important….we’ve had 20+ years of injuries and can compare some pain to other pains and be like this doesn’t hurt nearly as much as this other thing that happened. Pain is an experience that’s new to kids, especially little ones. Some overreactions are to be expected

ajhasaplan

There is a good chance that whatever just happened is literally the worst thing that has ever happened to them

tosety

This also applies to emotional pain.

They have not had the experiences that build emotional resilience yet, so it’s only normal that they will have a hard time with things we consider to be trivial. They may be trivial to us, but, as with physical pain “Whatever just happened is literally the worst thing that has ever happened to them”

thingsididntknowwereerotic

It’s hard to be a kid. Be gentle with their tender selves. They grow up nicer that way.

thehonoraryamerican

I fell off a swing when I was 5 and whacked my arm on a concrete pole on the way down. Now that shit hurt and I screamed and screamed all the way to the doctors office. One x-ray and a lollipop later and it was found out I didn’t have any breaks (apparently my bones are made of steel lol), just a seriously good whack to the arm that rendered the nerves a little wacky for a while (hence why it felt funny to move)

The first thing my grandma did was give me a lollipop before my mum and grandad took me to the doctor. She was thinking along the same logic as this post. Now, obviously my injury wasn’t serious, but the pain was serious enough that even a lollipop couldn’t calm me down.

The treat trick does work. I use it on my cousin because he is a bit of a drama queen. But also, don’t get upset or annoyed if the kid keeps crying and a trip to the doctor finds nothing wrong. Sometimes the pain is just really scary.

bakufucc

Understandable.
And sometimes, even if it is a serious injury ( like breaking a bone or something ) it can be easy to distract a kid by asking them about stuff they like or things they’ve done. For example, when I was 8 I slept with a spiked picture frame over my bed and one time I accidentally hit the wall when I was getting up in the middle of the night.

The picture frame ended up falling and hitting me directly in the eye and splitting the sclera as well as digging into the socket and making it bleed a bunch. It was pretty painful but on the ride to the hospital, one of the paramedics gave me some medication to dull the pain and tricked me into talking about my family. It actually helped a lot, because it helped me calm down and stop crying enough to not cause any further damage.

Even if I’ve been partially blind in that eye since then, that method was really helpful. I wouldn’t say it works on everybody, but I’ve seen plenty of cases where it does. Everybody’s different, but it doesn’t hurt to try.