How You Talk To Your Kids When They're Hurt

June 2, 2010

Interview with Judith Acosta, co-author of book Verbal First Aid: Help Your Kids Heal from Fear and Pain--and Come Out Strong

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Mike Carruthers:
Kids get hurt. And how parents react when their kids get hurt is more important than you might realize. For instance if a kid takes a bad fall…

Judith Acosta:
And the mother goes over to him and says, “My God, my God, my God are you OK? Oh my God, oh no look at all that blood!” How do you think the child is going to respond to that?

Judith Acosta, co-author of the book Verbal First Aid, says of course the child will freak out.

And what does freaking out do? It activates the sympathetic nervous system, which begins to activate adrenalin, which begins to shoot out more blood. If the mother comes over to him quietly and says, “Oh honey, that was quite a fall you took there, oh as I hold this you can begin to stop the bleeding because I know you’re such a good healer” – everything changes.

Kids and grown ups too always take their cues from other people when they get hurt.

If you notice when a child falls there’s a split second where they’re looking around, either they're looking for their parent, or their aunt, or their grandfather, somebody – as soon as they see their face then the response kicks in.

When you use this verbal first aid, phrases like “The worst is over” can be very powerful.

We generally say in verbal first aid, stay away from things that say, “Everything’s OK”. Tell them instead, “I’m here, I see what happened.” A parent’s demeanor is what the child sees – and what the child reverberates with.