Feeling Guilty over Injury

[TGT09]

i had a two year old ( who normally walked fine), trip over his own feet, and his head landed on a rock. he hit it just right to split his head wide open. of course i freaked, called 911, then mom. mom beat the ambulance to my house, which she was twice as far away... after they all left in the ambulance, i went inside and threw up, thats how upset i was. he got 4 stitches, and mom was o.k. about it. she knew it was an accident. funny thing is, that very weekend, he walked in to a door jam at home and needed 5 stitches on the other side of his forehead. he looked like frankenstein... that is the only serious accident to ever happen while i was doing daycare, but 3 years later, it still bothers me that it happened on my watch.

The paranoid person in me would wonder why this child is tripping and running into things all of a sudden.

Accidents definitely happen everywhere children are. It's a known fact.

ETA: I had 7yo dcg (who is accident prone) step on a bee in my backyard after being told not to go out barefoot numerous times...I felt awful and then she did it a second time. I think she learned her lesson to listen to me....I love going barefoot so I couldn't yell at her too much. Mom said she's been stung so many times it's not even funny....seriously her and her brother are the most accident prone children I have but I still feel super guilty every time something happens here. They BOTH had stitches this summer (not while with me) and they both had black eyes, and bruises everywhere....they just lead an active life and with that comes some injury. You have to let a child be a child some times.

[MarinaVanessa]

funny thing is, that very weekend, he walked in to a door jam at home and needed 5 stitches on the other side of his forehead. he looked like frankenstein...

This reminded me of the time that I visited my mother at her business (pet store) and my daughter stuck her finger in a rat cage that had just had babies. The rat bit her HARD and DEEP and her wound wouldn't stop bleeding and I drove her to urgent care (down the street from the pet store). 2 hours later and no stiches (just a bandaid and some gauze) and we went back to the pet store to give my mom an update. My daughter immediately pokes the parrot with a stick while I was next to her holding her hand and then stuck her finger into the parrot cage and it bit her hard :confused:. You would think they would learn wouldn't you.

Just reminds me that accidents do happen and sometimes there's not much you can do about it. I termed a DCB because he kept jumping on the furniture and hanging on a ledge in the living room and he sliced his hand open on an exposed nail that you can't even see but he jumped on the back-rest of the couch and reached up to hang on the ledge. I was literally chasing him around the room trying to get him to get down when it happened and mom just stood there . Needless to say that was the end of that client but because of me, not my client. Never had a client want to leave because of something happening here.

[kidkair]

I was digging in the garden with a couple 3 year olds and while I was holding the spade with dirt in it to move it to another area in the garden one of the 3 year olds ran around and smacked right into the spade. I immediately grabbed the first aid kit and stopped the bleeding then called the mom. I never said I was sorry and I think that helped me to not feel so horrible about it. The mom's response was "I knew he'd end up with stiches soon." She had no problem what so ever about it. In fact she was envious of my ability to keep him calm because at the doctor's he screamed his head off but right after the accident here I had him calm and hardly crying. One of the other parents came to pick up while I was stopping the bleeding and she said I looked like I was in a massacre with how much blood was on my coat. She also took comfort in the fact I was so calm and had the child calm as well. Instead of loosing clients I think I actually gained more trust in some of the parents because they saw how I was when faced with an emergency.