who doesn't show enough sympathy when the kids get hurt. I have four kids 11, 8, 5, 4 and someone in my house is constantly getting hurt. And anything from a broken arm down to the teeny tiniest paper cut results in the exact same ear piercing scream. It's really hard for me to distinguish between someone who has a bone sticking out of their body from a child who bit his/her own tongue until I get there to see it for myself and spend 10 minutes trying to decipher what they are saying between screams. Somewhere in the last 11 1/2 years, I have lost most of my sympathy for them when they scream like that. Mostly it just irritates me. Especially when they have gotten hurt because they were doing something they weren't supposed to. Tonight, my 4 year old DS was supposed to be going to bed. Dad was out for a little while running an errand, so I was in charge of getting kids in beds. Anyway, my son picks up the big tong things from the fireplace and takes off with them down the hall. I told him to bring them back and get in bed because they are heavy and will hurt if they drop on his toe. He says something about picking up the ball with them. As I'm going to retrieve them, I hear the sound of them falling to the ground and my son starts screaming. When I get there, he is crying and holding one foot up. I assume he has dropped them on his toe, which makes me angry because I had just warned him about that. I say "if you had put those away like I told you, you wouldn't be hurt." Then, I pick him up and look at his foot. Come to find out, he had been stung by a wasp on his ankle. I got him a wet paper towel and put him in my bed to wait for dad (and to watch him because he's never been stung before) and gave him some extra love. But now, I feel really bad because I was not very kind to him at first. Any suggestions for how to help my kids distinguish between a life threatening injury and something that they just need to shake off and go on? I want to be sympathetic when they really need it, but I don't want to raise wimpy kids...
Aww, that will push the guilt button. Don't be hard on yourself, though, you couldn't have known. And it IS irritating when kids ignore you. Especially when you're trying hard to avoid drama because you are TIRED. You are most certainly not alone. I have a very clumsy kid in my class. She has no idea where her body is and is usually flinging around madly and getting hurt. She gets this big, dramatic look on her face, always looks for me to make sure I saw her, and then cries out WAH! I get so tired of it, I get very calloused. Just yesterday a kid came and told me, "I think Sarah got hurt," and I said, "Well? Someone should take her to the office then." The kid just went about his business and a few minutes later she hobbled in with a huge welt on her thigh the size of a postcard. Yep, she was hurt all right and I still didn't have sympathy. Hope that makes you feel better!
I have had to remind ours not to "scream" like that inside or outside unless your are hurt. When you play scream like that neighbors are going to come running over, so they actually do a better job of that. Tiff... have been in your shoes earlier this year. It is so frustrating when they don't listen. I try to remind them has mom or dad ever told you to do something that will hurt you...nope. So why would we start now!!! They do think about that & listen a little better & then it's off to being a kid!!! HUGS to you!!! How's the sting?!? It's scary the first sting. Both of ours got stung at the same place & in about the same places on the body. Hmmm....back to that listening thing!!!
Time. Nothing you can do will be instantaneous. Anything that you try will take consistency. Your reaction will be the determining factor over time. As long as you act calm about whatever it is, then eventually, your children or any child should see that this is how one should react to distress.
Not knowing where the body is is something that should get the student OT services and an IEP. That is an issue with proprioception. I have the same exact issues. Walls love to jump out at me, same with those evil door knobs >_>
Oh, that infamous mother's guilt. I don't know if there is a cure for it, but it plagues most of us. Even though you say you have gotten immune to some of the screaming, it obviously still gets to you. You could take a classroom approach at home and give them some alternatives to the piercing screams (my ears are ringing just thinking about them). Let them show fingers denoting levels of pain or injury, have special color cards just for injuries (red for blood!) or any other kind of technique you might try in a larger group. Doesn't mean they will work, but at least you'll have a plan. Hey, just think. You still have the teenage years ahead of you!! (Sorry, but I'm in crisis mode here with a 23 year old.)
In the classroom, try memorizing a general response to the complainers and injured kids. Maybe something like, "Let's see if I can help." If you are allowed, a hand around the shoulder or a touch on the arm at the same time would help. I'm just trying to protect you, the teacher, so that you don't resort to loss of patience due to the aggravations. If you know you can rely on a response even when you aren't feeling too much sympathy, it might make it easier.
Don't go to them. Make them come to you if they're really hurt. Let them shriek if they want, and just trust that if they really are hurt they will let you know in some other way. I have 3 boys, all of whom are pretty active, and who get small injuries regularly. They have very different pain tolerances. Still, with each I can tell if they're really hurt or not, and they all know they typically have to actually show up in front of us to get any "service" (exceptions for sounds of shattering glass/breaking wood or other things that sound weird to us).
This reminds me of a story with my brother. We had a dog named Blue who went NUTS for his football. If the thing was around, you couldn't keep the dog away from it. You HAD to throw it for him, and he would TAKE OFF. So my brother had the brilliant idea to tie a water ski rope to the dog and throw the ball, thinking the dog would drag him through the yard and it would be a fun ride. Instead, as the long rope unraveled, all it did was throw him down on the ground - HARD. So he is screaming bloody murder, and my mom just comes out and lectures him on leaving the dog alone, rips his shirt off over his head which makes him scream even harder, and looks at it arms. Looked fine, no blood, so she told him to go sit down and get a hold of himself. An hour later he is still crying hysterically, so my dad takes him to the ER. Turns out he has a broken collar bone. Which was only exacerbated by mom pulling the shirt off over his head. My mom felt terrible, but he got over it. We laugh about it now.
Thanks! I feel a bit better about it now... Except, he was at it again tonight. He was crabby after school because he only took a 20-30 minute nap and the teacher woke him up, which he hates. His favorite thing to cry about when he's grumpy and tired is that his "foot hurts". The first few times, I took his shoes and socks off and looked his feet over, then massaged them when I couldn't find anything wrong. Over the last few months, he has been dragging out the crying and the massage longer and longer (this usually happens just before bedtime). So, tonight, he was eating dinner and he started complaining about his foot hurting. We knew he was tired from being woke up from his nap and the plan was for him to finish his dinner, go with dad to pick up sister from swim practice (I had to take the other two to gymnastics) and then come home and go to bed. So, we blew him off pretty much and just told him to stop complaining. When they got home, dad took off my son's boots to get him ready for bed and found a HAIR TIE around his leg! It had obviously been there a while and REALLY DID HURT. My DH got it off and my son is fine, but we still feel kind of bad. I'm bringing home "the boy who cried wolf" this weekend so we can talk about it.
