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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 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

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

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”

Kids don’t have experience or pain tolerance we do

Also, part of parenting is TEACHING your children when it IS That Big of a Deal and how they need to be cared for when that’s happening.

A lot of people who were abused and neglected have broken meters for this sort of thing.

I remember several circumstances where my ex-mother did not believe me about an injury or an illness being That Serious (like when I sprained my knee when I was 12 and it wouldn’t support my weight, or leaving me home alone when my fever was at 102+ for a week because I had the flu).

So when I was living on my own and first broke a bone at age 20, I was like “Well, my mom always said it would REALLY HURT A LOT if I broke a bone, so I guess because this isn’t THAT bad, I guess I’ll just elevate it.  Huh.  That’s swelling like *A LOT*.  Definitely need to elevate it longer”.

Or “I’ve been running a fever and I’m unsteady on my feet, but I can still totally do household chores, even though I’m borderline hallucinating!” – which happened too many times to count, though after I moved in with Flamethrower she threatened to sit on me if I didn’t rest.  (I have SLOWLY gotten better at this.)

If you take care of your children APPROPRIATELY when they are sick and injured, they learn how and when to take care of THEMSELVES later on!

As someone who’s worked a bit with kids, for something like a skinned knee – get them to sluice it. Get them to apply the antiseptic. Get them to place the bandaid. Do y’all remember how much it hurt when an adult just stuck their fingers in your open wound? If the kid is old enough and isn’t completely hysterical, you’re giving them control over their own care. It’s still going to hurt, but they can be as gentle applying that care as they need to be for their own comfort. Be there, handing them stuff and guiding them, but you’d be surprised how quickly kids can calm down and self regulate if the treatment is in their control. I did this with a kid who wiped out on her bike on the gravel out the front of my house. I think she was maybe nine, and she was screaming bloody murder. I ran outside, checked the kids were on their own (they were) and grabbed supplies to help. While her big sister raced to the camp ground to get her parents, I talked the kid through cleaning up her own knee. By the time the parents came running (from about a block away), she was calm and had stopped crying and was more or less okay. And I was someone she’d never met before. I asked her name, I told her mine, reassured her it was going to be okay, and I passed her sterile water, antiseptic cream and bandaids as she needed them. Being proactive about her own care helped her. We all handle stress and pain better if there’s something we can do about it.