Just Don't Get Hurt

I always tell my kids 'just don't get hurt, cause I'm not taking you to the emergency room!'

Why would I say a thing like that?

Have you taken a kid to the ER in the last few years?

If you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about! "So, honey, what really happened?" being the operative sentence, asked repeatedly and at length, with accompanying suspicious looks at the family.

When my youngest was about 6 he and his older brother were wrestling around in the living room while I made dinner, when the little guy started crying pretty hard and holding his arm clutched to his chest. We quickly decided this was something that required care, so we drove him to the ER, where we did the obligatory 4-hour wait. He was x-rayed, and finally we were told he had a condition known as 'nurse-maid's elbow' which is usually caused by an adult yanking on an uncooperative young child's arm. It's more common in preschool children. You've seen what leads to it, it's that thing that makes you just shiver when you see impatient parents/caregivers haul a little child through midair, flailing and screaming down the aisles of the local grocery store. It causes a partial dislocation of the elbow. It was easily remedied, thank goodness, but it was overshadowed by the adversarial attitude of the hospital staff.

I applaud the caution that doctors and nurses take with children in the ER, don't get me wrong, but there's a point at which it becomes over the top after repeated questioning, suspicious looks, and just plain old 'attitude' on the part of young doctors on their first rotation through a hospital. Despite what these barely-out-of-school-themselves people believe, parents who don't watch their children every second are not neglectful or bad parents. Kids are people, they move fast, they do goofy things, and when they're boys they usually have a bad case of  'look ma! no hands!!' to freak their parents out with.

It's sad enough to live in a world when the first thought we have when we see evidence of an injury is that it must be someone else's fault, especially the person that should love that child the most, but please give us enough credit that we don't have to stop and think twice about taking our kids to the doctor when they need it.