This morning several of the kids were down on the trampoline. The house was peaceful, but the sound of screaming drifted across the hills.
I wondered aloud whether they were happy screams and Deanna voiced her opinion: Assume they’re happy until you see the blood.
Actually, she’s right. That pretty well sums up how I operate, and it has worked out well for us so far in spite of the accident-prone gene carried by their father.
In 16 years of child-rearing, we’ve never had one accident-related visit to the ER. The Superman incident only resulted in a walk-in visit to the doctor’s office, for which we paid $300 for “outpatient surgery” because he applied a splint to her arm.
Deanna and I did go to the ER long ago for carbon monoxide poisoning when the furnace flue in our old house backed up, and we visited the ER again when a congenital issue acted up in one of the girls, but neither of those were injuries caused by accidents. Well, the flue didn’t exactly collapse on purpose, but you know what I mean…
All in all, I think that’s a good record. But I won’t get smug about it – I know that pride goes before a fall, and as soon as I check that “I’m a good parent” box we’ll have 6 visits in a month.
But what about your family? How well does the ER team know your kids? Are you brave enough to tell?
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We have 5 girls and one boy, 8yo-1yo. Our boy is 2yo. He has been to the ER for vomiting so much at 6 mo. that he turned blue. We grocery shopping and the ER was literally around the corner! Then he started having seizures at 1yo. So we’ve been to the ER twice for that, but know our EMTs really well! (Confession, one EMT is a dad of another homeschooling family in the area!) We’ve only had one accident related ER and that was with dd#3. She swallowed a hair clip when I was on bed rest. She was suppose to have been asleep, so DH left to get a sweet treat for his heavily pregnant wife. Ended well, though! She passed it without surgery or any major problem!
We’ve been in FL for 7 years and so far the only visit to the ER has been for me (I managed to break my knee into 3 pieces while attempting to disembark our boat). Prior to that, my 2 boys only had 1-2 visits apiece, and one of those was when I managed to slam my now 14yo’s head in the mini-van door when he was 4. Don’t know who they felt worse for, but when the younger ds visited for a possible head injury as a toddler about a year later, the nurse remembered me, and how bad she felt, for me. So, if anybody in this family is accident-prone, I’d say it’s ME:)
Lisa K.
I voted for every now and then kids will be kids, that saying I do have special needs kids and babies born prematurley. In the last 18 months we have had a few trips only 2 being stiches!(Same child) the other ones have been related to a genetic condition 3/7 kids do have. But I am the type to manage at home just fine. So when our small town hospital see’s us they know something must be very wrong.
For having a genetic condition that causes extremly loose joints(Hypermobility at it’s finest) we the abnormal group in not needing to go in to the hospital as much as others with the condition. We know our limits my kids affected know what they can’t do to, my motto is prevention is best!
My 3 old yr old has chipped her teeth…on 2 diff. occasions. Both times because she is clumsy and fell on our tile floor, the first time they had to pull the tooth bc the nerve was exposed, the second time she got away with just chipping off half a tooth. Good news is, baby teeth aren’t for keeps
Too much! My second son is nicknamed Crash & Burn.
Febrile seizures at a year old. We didn’t take him for the first one, but he kept having them. We’ve been told that it’s really rare to have more than one seizure per illness. At the time it concerned us, now we just know he breaks all kinds of rules!
He’s been bitten in the face by a friend’s dog.
Sprained his ankle at 1yo and refused to use his leg … wait, that was a doctor visit.
Overall, the poor guy just has unique “stuff” happen to him. *sigh* He’s been to the doctor more than his other two siblings.
Thankfully DH is a Dr.!!! Otherwise I’m sure we’d be there regularly. He’s had to stitch both the boys. One cut his hand on tile and hit an artery…I had to play nurse on the kitchen floor (I was laying down on the COOL tile so I wouldn’t faint! LOL). Several split chins, fingers, and eyebrows that needed supergluing. Then we added our first broken arm a week ago…
I have one particular child that came close to the ER knowing him by name. If we lived in a smaller town when he was little they would know him. Before he even turned 3, he visited the ER 5 times! He was (and still is) a climber/adventure seeker. He has had stitches 2 times, the glue once, and a broken wrist. The fifth time was a week after he had gotten his cast removed, he decided to jump off big brother bunk bed. Turned out okay though.
Although since he turned 3 we have been in the clear. He is almost 7 now. My older son has never been in the ER for accidents, and my youngest has because I accidently pulled her elbow out of socket during a diaper change. Yes I felt horible and still do! 
My husband is in the Military and two to three days before he leaves we WILL end up in the ER with one of our three kids. Most likely it will be my son. Only two times was it someone else, me once (I think I am the one who he gets it from) and the other time it was my middle child (I think the boy was apart of it so does that count?) hurt her leg. I do feel weird when we go to the hospital and we know so many people. I try to blow it off with, well we live on such a small post…but it does not help.
How about another option: Never. I have boys. I feel guilty. Maybe I’m smothering them.
Lets see, we had an ER visit for a toothpick in an eardrum and a chicken nugget up a nose. No kidding. Our dr has a jar with all his nose and ear ‘things’. All other visits were for illnesses. We did go to urgent care for swallowed glow stick liquid but it was non toxic, apparently. Oh there was one for a birth injury after one of our homebirths. Does that count?
Of my four boys, each of the two older ones has been to the ER for an allergic reaction, second son had a trip to the ER so the plastic surgeon on call could stitch his lip up…(or ped wouldn’t do it as he thought my son would grow up to be a model and he, the ped, would mess his lip up—-he is a good looking young man, now!). Our oldest daughter made several ER trips due to febrile episodes during her first 2 years and then several times for asthma attacks in which she was admitted–once to the critical care unit. Daughter number two also had one ER visit which resulted in admission due to asthma. So, out of all of those ER trips only one was due to an accident and not a pre-existing condition. HOWEVER, the winner for ER visits due to accidents is my third DAUGHTER, who has broken both arms and had to have stitches in her head…not at the same time. She doesn’t know how to operate in a lady-like manner and is always running at full-throttle.
Just reading through the replies and was reminded of the tug of war that our oldest daughter had with a German shepherd. Our oldest son, age two at the time, was the rope. We have also had broken ribs and a very bruised face, but we just went to the pediatrician for those.
I’m the oldest of four, and each of us has been to the ER more than 5 times – mostly for accidents, but in my case for just about everything. We’re not far off a parking space…
I voted rarely, but I must say that I call poison control at least once a month and only on two of my children. My middle and my youngest are very mischievous. And they are girls!!!
Amazing that you’ve been there so little!
Funny thing. I have 3 girls and 4 boys. The girls are so careful and cautious. The boys are textbook boys: adventurous little daredevils. Except the baby, who isn’t even crawling yet.
But the emergencies have always involved the girls, never the boys who have had too many close calls to count. Go figure!
Our ER visits:
- a burned hand (laid it right down on the oven door at 14 months old)
- a broken foot (jammed it on the coffee table jumping off the couch)
- a broken arm (she put both legs into one leg of her pajama bottoms so the other pajama leg could be a “tail,” and then came the fall…)
- 2 breathing emergencies for our asthma girl
- a few false alarms
All I can figure is that we *expect* the boys to do something crazy, so we watch them like hawks. The girls catch us off guard!
Goodness. I have five kids and we’ve been to the ER MULTIPLE times.
Child #1: Girl. hand slammed in sliding van door… went for x-rays… nothing broken.
Child #2: Boy. Prolonged infantile vomiting (hours and hours!) Stitches in face. Stitches in face again. Emergency appendectomy.
Child #3: Boy. Freaky febrile seizure. Hand & wrist slammed in sliding van door…nothing broken.
Child #4: Girl. Swallowed button battery. Fingers closed in the hinge-side of the bathroom door as a baby and we couldn’t tell if anything was broken…nothing was. Little bones must be made of rubber! Stitches in face. Rusty nail puncture wound in the bottom of foot (chickens in yard) so we went in for TIG injection (tetanus toxoid is useless for emergencies in a previously unvaccinated person).
Child #5: Boy. Thought he swallowed a battery but we were wrong.
I feel like I’m leaving something out, but as you can see… we’re no strangers to the ER! :-/
Let’s see, we had one trip when my one son was 9mo. His older sister shut his fingers in the door and continued trying to close it because it wouldn’t shut! Poor guy. But, nothing was broken only badly bent and bruised. Then my daughter was playing nicely while all the other kids were roughing around. She, of course, somehow fell into the coffee table and almost bit through her lip. That was 6 stitches. That’s the only E.R. visits, so far, in our life. My oldest son has a record in our home: Two bloody lips, a split open eyebrow, and a black eye all different incidents within a week! That was when he was 1 1/2! I’m telling you, he’s a wildman! He’s almost 6 now and is still rough as ever. There is often blood in our home, but it’s always manageble
.
We are plenty accident prone around here but have only been to the ER once. We usually go to our reg. dr. or urgent care. We have six kids, including 5 boys ages 8 to 2. Some of our injuries include:
broken clavicle
broken wrist
broken toe
dislocated elbow x2
knocked out tooth
stitches (shockingly only once!)
ripped off fingernail
I joke I’m going to put up a wall of injuries with photos and mounted (like trophy fish) casts, stitches, etc.
I’m sure we add many more injuries to this list in the years to come.
I’ve (thankfully) only had one ER visit with my DD, for running head first into the fireplace, but then again, she’s a toddler and I only have one!
The last option the poll cracked me up, because my dad is so accident-prone, they truly *do* know him by name in the ER.
None of my four kids has ever been to the ER for an accident, although one probably needed stitches – guess what, if you don’t go w/in 2 hours of the cut, they will not stitch it. It healed fine anyway and isn’t visible today, even though it was right between his eyebrows on his forehead. It happened on his nineth birthday, and he will be 19 next month. I went to the ER for stitches once when I got hit in the face by a skateboard – launched by one of their friends, not my own child. We have been numerous times though for allergic reactions, cessation of breathing, croup, asthma attacks, vomiting & assoc dehydration, and other exciting medical situations. And twice we had broken collarbones treated at the ped’s office – same child as above.
Interesting timing. We just took our firstborn, 3yrs old, to the ER last night for the first (last? I hope!) time. She needed three stitches to her forehead. Most of my family members have never been, except my youngest brother who’s broken his arm quite badly 3 times so far. He’s eleven; I hope he doesn’t choose any high-impact sports in high school.
Our special needs baby boy is known by name there… unfortunately! LOL!
My oldest (23) is the most accident prone. She has had stitches in her knee, eyebrow, hand and came close many other times. She trips walking across the kitchen or up the stairs. She is constantly spraining some joint. She has slammed her own head in the door of her own car. I think she gets it from her paternal grandmother who falls down stairs and walks into rear view mirrors – Do you think you can inherit being accident prone? Her twin – a boy has no injuries I can recall. Number 3 – girly girl – “supermarket elbow” from being swung around as a toddler. Number 4 – boy – our daredevil. He went the most for stitches in the shortest period of time when he was a baby and again when he was about 8 – 11 but hasn’t hurt himself much lately (except for the debris that flew into his eye cross country skiing which required an ER visit). Amazingly no broken bones yet! But we’re not through yet. The youngest has taken up whitewater kayaking, snowboarding and is a reckless biker.
We hold the record for the Pineville ER in Charlotte, NC. Our almost 1year old swallowed an ornament hook. They said she was the first they had seen to do that!! Our other daughter fell 2 days before Christmas the year she was 2. She was in the church nursery and hit the rocker of a rocking chair. 48 stitches later we were leaving the ER in that town. Church said she was first child in 100 years to get hurt and have to go to the ER!!!! My kids have something for setting records it seems. Funny that it’s been the 2 girls and not the 2 boys!!!
I was just telling some moms the other day that we’d only been to the ER for illnesses, which is unusual since I have 4 boys. Of course, a few days later, we were in the ER for an accident. It wasn’t the worse type of accident, but my 5 year old did manage to get a HUGE splinter under his fingernail. It was over half an inch long (went down past the quick) and was a few millimeters wide. You could see it easily from the outside because it was so huge. We were on vacation, so we couldn’t go to our regular pediatrician. There was no pediatric urgent care in the city we were in, so we found a hospital with a pediatric ER and went there. No one there gave us a hard time about being in the ER. They all said he needed it. They were able to get it out with just a numbing shot and then trimming his nail down about half way. We were very grateful that they didn’t have to remove the whole nail. I had to go to our regular doctor today for a recheck (a recheck for a splinter!!!), and he’s on antibiotics.
Most of our ER visits (5 in 7 children, 13 years of parenting) have been sibling-induced. Our youngest was brought in at 11 months when an over zealous sister decided that the kitchen chair the baby’d been using as a walker was just not good enough and snatched it away from the precarious toddler, who fell and hit her lip on the aforementioned chair. 8 stitches. A brother got mad at a younger sister and pushed her, unfortunately forgetting the stairs were quite close…broken arm(s)…one worse than the other. You get the picture.
When The Boy gets older your record may change.
Actually, neither of my boys have had an ER visit but two of the girls’ ER visits were inadvertently caused by boys: One when my friend’s son landed on my daughter’s collarbone (trampoline) and one when my son removed a branch from the zipline and it fell on my daughter’s head, cracking her forehead right open. The other two ER visits were an appendicitis scare and when my toddler fell off the back of a bench and cracked her head on the fireplace.
I only have 3 but one of them is of the gung-ho-do-everything-at-full-force type!!!! He wears me out!
Boy #1 – 1 visit for severe croup.
Boy #2 – Nasty virus at 5 weeks (ended up hospitalized); COUNTLESS visits for severe croup and pneumonia; stitches in face, sprained foot at 16 mo. (we thought it was broken and have no idea how he did it); flu; and MANY other accidents where I probably should have taken him to the ER (I distinctly remember a gigantic splinter from sticking is finger through a hole in our privacy fence that I did “surgery” on myself);
Girl #1 – Nasty virus w/all sorts of complications.
I have read your site now for a while. I thank you for being so open as to how your family runs.
I voted and my vote was they know us by name reasons…3 year old with Leukemia so there are lots of visit any time we have a fever over 101. As for injuries we have been blessed with not so many.
I never had to go to the ER as a child, and never to the doctor for any accidents either.
But when I was 22 I was taking out the trash and noticed a roach crawling around above the doorframe going into the garage. Well I HATE roaches, so I thought “I’m going to run really fast through the doorway so it doesn’t fall or jump on me”. Unfortunately, I had never run on the cement in our garage before, which is really really slick, and a fell really hard on my rear end.
My mom took me to urgent care the next day to be x-rayed, but I didn’t break or fracture anything. I was supposed to be staying home alone that weekend though, so I ordered a pizza, because I didn’t manage to stand up straight or walk right for about three days.
I learned my lesson, and decided I’d have rather dealt with the bug than the busted bum, so I don’t run through the garage anymore.
We’ve been for several things, but the worst was when my now-5 month old stopped breathing at 7 weeks. I took him to the ER and they were moving so slow; I kept trying to tell them that something was horribly wrong but they didn’t believe me. (I look young, but we’ve had 20 foster children and now have 5 children under 3, so I know a little bit about kids
.) Anyhow, when we finally got back to the room, he stopped breathing in front of the doctor and turned blue- I said- Look, he’s blue! All of a sudden the atmosphere changed! They ended up airlifting us to a bigger hospital. Praise the Lord he’s okay now; that was a horrible day. The ER doctor was very nice though and remembered us when we brought our daughter in for a UTI.
We only have 4 years under our belt and so far, so good with no ER visits. However, I am the accident prone one in the family and I don’t think my ER visits started until around age 5. I am bracing myself.
I would not say that never visiting the ER qualifies anyone for being a good parent. I don’t know if I am just lucky or overprotective!
Brandi,
The part about being a good parent was firmly tongue-in-cheek! We’re certainly not overprotective: I tend to let my babies and toddlers take a lot of small falls while they’re little in the hope that they’ll learn some healthy caution when they get big enough to really hurt themselves. It’s only by the grace of God that we haven’t had far more visits to the ER.
The Lord has used my children’s health to grow me in the area of trusting Him. I would take my children to the doctor (or ER if they were sick in the wee hours) for the least little illness. But as He grew our family (we now have 10 children~ages 7 months to 26 years; the oldest is married), I began to learn how to treat most illnesses at home. Superglue works great for most cuts that would otherwise require stitches (as long as it is a straight cut and not really deep). And Wild Mediterranian Oregano treats everything from colds and flus to bronchitis and pnuemonia. Now that we no longer have medical insurance, I’m glad I haven’t had to rely on the medical community in several years.
No emergency room visits but my oldest had a thing for burning herself. At one she put out her birthday candle with her fingers, shortly after that she touched one of those super hot desk lamp bulbs, visited the dr office, it was much closer than the emergency room, then at 3 she burned her hand on the heating element at grandma’s house in another state, thankfully grandma knew exactly what to do since she dr up my arm after I laid it on a freshly welded bumper at the same age. So no scarring and she didn’t ever act injured. Same child, I’d have to do a basic skin check every night to see if any thing required bandaging or extra attention, cause she would never stop to tell me she was hurt! Same child, all her friends thought she was a boy that liked dress’s, we heard this from several boy friends that wanted to invite her to boy only birthday parties! Thankfully outgrown now, and she acts like all the other girls and begs for bandaids over ever tiny scratch.
I’ve actually never had to take one of my kids to ER. That being said, I know it WILL happen…I’m sure of it
I do have one child that is prone to getting hurt..but just the stubbing of toes, falling down, scrape on the knee kind of hurt…though, the way she responds, you’d think she does need to go to the ER!
We tend to go long stretches without problems and then have several incidents within a short space of time. Two have been for accidents–(one cracked skull, oh yes, that was my son). More often for illness (appendicitis, pneumonia) food allergies and my pregnancies (pre-term labor, etc.) but still not often.
I find there is no correlation between the “dangerous” nature of the activity and accidents. We operate on the “wait until you see blood” principle as well and there has never been a serious accident resulting from adventurousness (although our oldest is only 7.5). Luke cracked his skull tripping and falling into an oak dining chair! We probably wouldn’t have taken him except that an ER doc friend of ours was there and recommended it! Oops.
I like your blog a lot
Just found it a couple of weeks ago.
I voted for the “more often than I care to admit – I have boys” BUT the boys include my husband. He’s at the ER at least twice a year – I usually can handle it fine when he calls me to say “Honey, I’m going in to the ER”. Then it usually results in a funny story like – the young scrawny doctor was too wimpy to pull the nail out of my hubby’s thumb so hubby had to do it himself! The worst times have been when someone else has called me saying they’re taking him to the ER!!!!
I’ve only had kids in there a couple times (which is pretty good considering 3 out of the 7 are boys). However, their injuries are all a result of working with their dad. That said – I’m very thankful for my rough and tumble, hardworking hubby and boys!!
Eight children but only 3 trips to the ER (two – for stitches – with the same child).
We’re more of a Poison Control family, instead.
Four children, ages 12-4, and thus far just ONE visit when one was coughing up blood and it was after 5 on Friday. Ended up just being some bronchitis. I thank my lucky stars we haven’t had any broken bones or stitches yet (though should have on a boy one time. But he survived, head wounds always bleed more). Extra thankful that all those years we had no insurance whatsoever. Now that we have it since hubby had to go to town and get a real job to support his farming habit, we can afford the broken bones; bring it on! (JUST KIDDING!!!)
We are doing better, but with the boys we have been there for stiches, staples, glue, falling out of trees, bike accidents. And it never fails they always seem to get hurt just before dinner/bath time, so they are at there dirtest.
Didn’t vote because I’m not a mom, but my siblings and I have never gone to the ER or been in the hospital..except for Ruth, the baby, who had late-onset vitamin K deficiency. She spit up blood when she was still pretty little and so Mom and Dad took her to the ER. She ended up being fine. Usually it doesn’t have ANY symptoms..we were very blessed. She is almost 2 now and SO cute!
I voted never and claimed that I am a good parent for it
Does it count if my one child is only ten days old?? Or is that cheating?