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Did your kid get a concussion hunting for eggs? Statistics show that children's injuries spike on holidays, but a new study released in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics suggests holiday-specific hijinks aren't actually to blame. For example, only 2.9 percent of injuries occurring during the five day period around July 4th were linked to fireworks, while 8.6 percent were tied to bicycling. Research indicates that plain old everyday activities are to blame for most of the bumps and bruises sustained around the holidays, it's just that factors like a house full of relatives make those everyday activities slightly more...treacherous (more dinner guests, more chance of somebody spilling their steaming hot coffee on a short person's head).
As a mother of two, I couldn't agree more with the study's findings.
It wasn't a holiday the night I took my daughter Charlotte to the ER for a split chin, but we were dinner guests at a friend's house. Six kids had been running around all afternoon - inside, because it was the dead of winter - climbing on furniture, sliding in their socks on the kitchen floor. I don't know how many times I heard myself say "Stop jumping off the couch, somebody's going to get hurt!"
Of course, somebody did get hurt, but it didn't happen jumping off of the couch. For the first time that day, the kids were sitting quietly. Probably because they were eating pizza, but still. My daughter's elbow was on the dining room table, chin resting in the palm of her hand, when she slipped and crashed into her ceramic dinner plate with a crash. On impact, the plate broke into sharp, jagged pieces, one of which went straight into the bottom of Charlotte's chin. Twenty-one stitches and a big gauze bandage later, people wanted to know: "How did she get hurt?"
"Eating dinner," I would be forced to answer.
Two years later, Charlotte's scar has faded quite a bit, but the irony is still plain as day. And I haven't forgotten the lesson I learned: Kids can hurt themselves doing just about anything.
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