My 7 year old nephew needs to have a blood test but he’s scared of the needle. Today he attended the clinic but the test was never done due to his struggling and crying.
I don’t want to hold him down by force, so I’m hoping some dopers will have a strategy
that has worked for them. I don’t lie to him, I tell him it does sting, but the pain goes away quickly. My wife thinks he may have to be sedated. I have to have blood tests on a regular basis but I’m not sure if letting him see me having the test will help him or scare him.
You may find this - http://www.gosh.nhs.uk/medical-information/procedures-and-treatments/fear-of-needles/ - helpful.
Remember that the people who do this are well used to nervous children (and parents). The advice about distraction is one I used with my daughter. A treat promised in advance (A trip to Mc D, would you believe) and sitting on my lap talking about what she was going to choose and what toy might be in the meal, it was over before she realised. Of course it does help to have sympathetic nurses.
I assume that they have anesthetic spray or cream available. If not, take your own.
Anectodal evidence, but him seeing you take a test might actually help.
My youngest sister was deathly afraid of shots, but seeing her twin brother go first always calmed her down. On one occasion she was taken first, before seeing him go, and she near howled her head off.
He, on the other hand, got to be ‘brave for his little sister’, which naturally meant that he had no problems going first.
Then mom would take both of them down to McDs and buy them happy meals.
Wait in the waiting room. The nurses and phlebotomists know what they’re doing. He’s far less likely to act out without a family member to be his audience.
Seems like a good idea, I’ll try that.
My daughter had an extreme needle phobia, but she really wanted to get her belly button pierced. I took her with me and got another ear piercing, with her watching. We talked the entire time. The piercer (a friend) let her hold a needle and talked to her about endorphin release, etc. my daughter liked the science.
We returned to the shop for a “maybe bellybutton pierce”. She had the option of backing out at any time. The piercer taught her about breathing and focus. I sat there holding her hand and the piercing went smoothly. She was so happy she was near tears.
It was an empowering event for her. I’ve heard her tell the story to others. She is a pediatric nurse (infants/newborns) today.
Point out to him that he might develop superpowers. Talk to him about what the powers might be, and how he’d use them. Worst case scenario, he’s spent some time talking about it and thinking about it, so he’s a little more used to it. Best case scenario, superpowers.
I think staying out of the room is not a good idea. Doctors and nurses are not even comforters (compared to family) for us as adults.
I do agree, and do so, when my dog gets a grooming/bath, and he starts acting up, which is always, until I leave.
ETA: Just remembered (Thanks, SD!): When I was six or seven, they thought I might have leukemia, and I had to have blood drawn constantly. (Of course, blood drawn is a longer and bigger procedure than a shot). Anyway, the earliest clear visual memory of my father I have, honestly, is the look of my father’s face–so young and strange to me now!–kind of sad telling me how his tie was stained from my crying and he had to go to work.
I think I remember that memory (you know what I mean) because it’s one of the earliest, if not the earliest, mental image I have of him, etched in my mind because he was still a young professor, not the elderly (old old, now, actually) sage and author he became.
(I’m afraid our time is up now. I think we’ve made some progress, and I’ll see you next week.)
Well, the first mistake was leaving the clinic without getting blood drawn the first time. Now he knows that with enough whining and crying he won’t have to do it. The first time my daughter had blood drawn I sat in the chair with her on my lap. I held her tight against me while she begged, pleaded, cried and screamed bloody murder but the blood got drawn. She just filed her own taxes for the first time last night so I figure she turned out alright in the end.
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This is more of an advice and opinion thing than a factual question.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
You might try unabashed bribery; if there’s some toy or something that the boy REALLY wants, use that as a lever to get him to behave.
In my experience, you are just going to have to hold them down by force, at least the first couple of times. I warn them that they are going to get that shot or that blood draw, TODAY. I know it sucks, it’s scary, and it’s going to hurt. They can do it the easy way or the hard way, but it’s going to happen today. Either way they’ll get rewarded afterward for getting through it, but if they make it easy for all involved, the treat afterward will be extra-special. Up to you to define what’s a treat and what’s an extra special one.
Man, I was the same way when I was a kid and it sucked. I had to get blood drawn a lot too because I was always being tested for endocrine problems. I can’t remember anything that worked!
Then when I was 14 I had to have a spinal tap and was in the hospital overnight and that was the end of that problem. Here’s a spinal tap needle. My dad was afraid/sick/sad or something and couldn’t stay with me in the room. I was never afraid of needles again.
Not too long after that I got my ears pierced like 5 times, and got an elaborate tattoo a couple months after my 18th birthday. Now I’m a blood donor.
So…emergency spinal tap? It’ll cure him.
This. When I was five I got a battery of allergy tests, which back then involved needles. My mother let me buy a toy dinosaur after each one. I collected a lot of dinosaurs and have no fear of needles to this day.
I think letting your nephew watch you get your blood tested while you’re sitting there totally calm and blasé about it would help him a lot, actually.
I was once in the unenviable position of being the calmer-downer/holder-downer for an entire elementary school of kids who needed immediate TB tests (due to a lunch lady being discovered to have active TB). It wasn’t the 3-prong test, it was fluid administered through a needle in the hand, and I must have let the nurse prick me maybe 30-40 times to demonstrate to the kids how little of a deal it was. I also made a point of telling them very casually (and demonstrating too) that if you don’t watch what the nurse is doing, it’s over in a snap.
The important thing is just to model completely calm and nonchalant behavior. If you can laugh and joke with your nephew while you’re getting your own blood drawn, he’ll see that it’s nothing to be afraid of.
My daughter had many blood draws in her younger days and it was never pleasant. They sometimes used a topical anesthetic to lessen the pain but I don’t know how much it helped. To make things worse, she is one of those people who has/had hard-to hit veins and it often took three or more sticks. It really sucked watching her go through this time and again. She HATED needles and I can’t say that I blamed her. The only advice I have is, if you find a good phlebotomist see if you can arrange to see him/her each time.
Maybe say in advance, “There’s going to be a needle. Most people cry, but you should try *not *to cry?”
My five-year-old isn’t needle-shy, so it’s a different situation and this may or may not help, but when she was younger and nervous about her flu shot I did two things. I let her watch me get the shot first, while I chatted cheerfully away with the doctor. And I told her that when the doctor said ‘Go’ she needed to stay still and count to ten out loud, nice and evenly, and then it would be over. Something about the counting towards a defined end point really seemed to help.
Yep. Definitely an option.
Go to a place where they do a lot of pediatric blood draws as well - the techs there can nail that vein in a jiffy and the kid barely has time to realize what’s happening.
There’s a topical cream (EMLA, which is an acronym for something) that you can apply over the area beforehand to numb it; the downside is you have to do so 20 minutes or so in advance and cover it with something occlusive (think plastic wrap) to keep it effective.
When Dweezil was about 3, we had a full neurological workup on him including a blood draw, which included a bunch of tests for some fairly exotic stuff. We took him to a lab to have it done on a Friday. They sat him in that chair with the locking arm over it, and basically held his arm down and got it done.
He, naturally, was screaming, and I wanted to pick him up right away and the damn arm thing would not release. I came pretty close to ripping it right off the chair to get him loose.
The real kicker: after that was done, the tech said “Oh, this one takes xxx time to do. I don’t think we can run it on a Friday. He’ll have to come back”.
I distinctly remember snarling something to the effect of “and why the hell didn’t you tell us that BEFORE???”. Because, see, if we’d known, we’d have come back on a different day.
Fortunately, they WERE able to do it without requiring a second blood draw, which is why that tech’s family didn’t have to attend a funeral shortly afterward.
On a lighter note: About 10 years after that, he needed to have blood drawn again. He was highly motivated: it was to retest for some food allergies, and he wanted to be able to eat seafood (we’d been told a couple years before that his results suggested an allergy). He was fine - until we got to the lab. Then he “had to go to the bathroom” and it took quite a few minutes to coax him out. The draw was otherwise a non-issue, and he’s never had a problem since then.