I don’t have any kids yet but I am often amazed at how dangerous some kids can play with others. Were talking 3-6 year olds here. They’re usually too young to know any better and probably don’t know how dangerous their actions are but i’ve seen some just awful actions that i’m suprised don’t end up severly damaging the other kid.
Such as pushing another off a high piece of playground equipment, jumping on anothers head, hitting eachother in the head with hard objects, punches to the face, kicks to various body parts, etc.
If I’m ever at a busy playground with my nephew I always cringe and flinch while these kids try to kill eachother. Usually while their mothers sit idly by gossiping with other mothers. It usually ends up with some kid crying and running to mommy but I’ve seen some close calls where it looks like the barely avoided an ugly incident.
Do kid on kid severe injuries occur a lot or am I just paranoid??
Little kids are soft and so they bounce.
You’ve got what I like to call “first child syndrome” (even though you don’t have a child yet). You can always tell the parents who have first child syndrome. They are running around the playground worrying over everything their child does, waiting for what they think is the inevitable ambulance ride. By the time you get to your third child, you just sit on the bench relaxing. When there is the inevitable scream, you look up, make sure there’s no major blood or broken bones, then calmly go back to what you were doing while all of the first child parents stare at you like you’re a monster.
Kids are small. They don’t have much mass, so the collisions don’t have as much energy. Plus, their bones are flexible. Disasters are actually fairly rare, though minor boo-boos are sometimes a daily event.
First child parents also try to keep their kids clean. Trust me, that never works. Third child parents let their kids wallow in the mud like pigs. It all washes off.
HAH! Try working the pediatric ER for a while. Depressed skull fractures on a 4 year old, inflicted by a 5 year old sib, greenstick fractures of the radius in a two year old, given by a 7 year old playing “indian rope burn trick”, external ear torn off in a 9 month old by their jealous 3 year old sib, etc etc. All in one 24 hour shift I remember.
“fairly rare” my sterling silver hindquarters!
Yeah, kids are resiliant, but they can still break without working up a sweat. Unfortunately.
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I’d think occurances like these would be somewhat common yet I never hear much about them. Is it considered taboo in some way because children were involved? Or maybe the parents are embarassed to tell anyone what their child did to their younger sibling?
I don’t think it’s particularly taboo, you just can’t drive yourself nuts worrying or you’ll be OCD parent who’s kid is developmentally stunted. Supervise, sure, but let kids be kids. I have a bit of the first-child syndrome, even though mine’s eleven now, so mostly I just don’t look. Seriously, as bad as that sounds, what’s worse: never letting them climb on the monkey bars and play baseball or me shrieking like a fishwife and insisting they sit and have tea parties all day? I try for a happy medium, pay my insurance premiums and keep a watch enough that no one’s shooting arrows or trying to fly off the garage roof.
For instance, my son and a neice were tugging over the same plastic baby hockey stick and when he won, her two front teeth were broken clean in two by the rebound. Neither my sister or I utterly freaked about it, we knew it wasn’t intentional and once it’s done you just deal with it. But that was one incident out of hundreds of major-injury free days, right? So what would be the point of obsessing over it?
Qadgop is absolutely right, as usual, but keep in mind that whatever horrible day that was when he saw all those peds cases in one shift, how many other kids in that area were just fine?
You don’t hear about these types of incidents because very young children are rarely accused of malicious acts. Even the 3-year old tearing off the infant’s ear is not considered malicious because the 3-year old is deemed unable to understand the consequences of the action. Indeed, the 3-year old is unable to rationally evaluate the possibility of the ear becoming detached.
Whether you are a first-time parent or an 8-time parent, the best and easiest way to prevent careless injury is to not allow children to “hand-play.” No hitting, kicking, biting, spitting, scratching, pushing, pulling, pinching, hair pulling, wrestling, throwing things, etc. Taboos against certain “hand-play” are naturally suspended if the kids are participating in an activity that requires aggressive physical contact.
Naturally, you’re not going to stop children from having the occassional physical dispute. However, if you enforce the “no hand-play” rules, you’re less likely to have your children inflicting serious harm on each other.
People don’t take the kids who don’t get hurt to the pediatric ER.
Wanna bet? A lot of my time there was examining kids who were fine, but the parents wanted to be sure they were fine! “He might have bumped his head, I’m not sure. I just wanted him checked. His poops seemed a little looser”. This on a happily playing 18 month old. Etc etc etc
As for the OP, it happens, and it’s not “fairly rare”. Leprosy is fairly rare. Kids hurting kids is common. Not as common as kids trying but failing to hurt other kids, but still common.
The old “got your ear” trick gone astray. 