How to deal with your kid's minor injuries at home

Pandemic or no, children are going to get hurt. What can parents treat at home, and when should they seek medical attention?

A house.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

The coronavirus pandemic has forced most of us to stay home unless we have an "essential" reason to leave. There's an amount of risk with every outing, and this is especially true when considering whether to enter a medical setting. We don't want to expose ourselves or anyone else to infection. We also want to avoid putting extra pressure on a health-care system that's already under strain. This presents parents of injured children with a difficult question: Should we go to the doctor or emergency room, or can I deal with this at home?

"Parents have always been able to treat a whole host of injuries at home, from minor scrapes and cuts to burns and eye-splashes," says Cara Natterson, M.D., pediatrician and author of Decoding Boys: New Science Behind the Subtle Art of Raising Sons. She recommends parents start by bookmarking a couple of websites: poison Control for questions about ingestions, and Healthy Children, the American Academy of Pediatrics' parenting portal for advice on treating minor bumps and bruises. Most children's hospitals also have websites that can help you decide whether you need to be seen with a specific injury in the first place — so find your local one and bookmark it too.

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Claire Gillespie

Claire Gillespie is a freelance writer with bylines on Health, SELF, Refinery29, Glamour, The Washington Post, and many more. She likes to write about parenting, health, and culture. She lives in Scotland with her husband and six kids, where she uses every (rare) spare moment to work on her novel.