Is your child accident-prone?

Is your child accident-prone?

Is she just a daredevil? Or could there be more to it than that? John Muturi explores

Some children just seem to keep on having accidents; before healing her burnt hand on an electric fire, she has scalded her foot with water from the kettle, and then broken her arm jumping off a wall.

Remember these are only the serious injuries — cuts and bruises are a frequent occurrence. Is she just a daredevil? Or could there be more to it than that?

One group of children who suffer an unfair share of minor injuries are those who’re clumsy, often said to have ‘apraxia’ — the medical term for an inability to make skilled movements with accuracy.

Clumsy children are usually a little late in their early milestones — perhaps rolling over at five months, sitting at nine and cruising around the furniture at 15 months. They may have difficulties with buttonholes and shoelaces. Their handwriting is untidy and by the age of nine or ten their schoolbooks look as though a spider with inky legs had walked all over them.

When you give a clumsy child a glass to hold, it will leap out of her hands and crash to the floor. She will spot an expression of dumbfounded surprise on her face. They knock onto things, chairs fall over as they go past and they crack their elbows against the door as they walk through.

It can be very miserable being like this because most people regard clumsiness as laziness. These children are blamed by parents, punished by schoolteachers and mocked by friends for their awkwardness. It becomes just as much as physical disability as other handicaps.

What causes clumsiness?

Clumsy people can’t be neat, tidy and accident-free. Their brains don’t work quite normally. The coordination between what they see and how their body moves in response is not properly developed. Often this ties up with problems that happened in pregnancy, labour or delivery-such as high blood pressure, failure of the baby to grow at the right rate in the womb or delay in starting to breathe at birth.

‘Minimal brain damage’ is a term used by some neurologists to describe the cause of clumsiness but there is still no proof of this. The problem is not as serious as it sounds and it certainly doesn’t mean clumsy children are backward. It just means a small part of the brain may be functioning differently, causing clumsiness.

Clumsy children deserve an explanation along the lines of: ‘Your brain doesn’t work exactly like other people’s because of something that happened to you before you were born. So whatever your teacher says, it’s not your fault your work is untidy or that you do badly at physical exercise in school.

Thankfully, most steadily improve with practice, encouragement and lack of destructive criticism so that by the teenage years there is little of the disability left.

Not all accident-prone children are clumsy. Some seem to invite trouble deliberately. Some are always a problem for their family.

Even at school they are unpopular. They push other children around, spoil their games, grab their toys and have a terrible temper. At school they disrupt lessons, fight with classmates and defy teachers; they are intelligent but can’t learn to read.

According to child psychiatrists, this behaviour is called ‘aggressive conduct disorder’ but often called ‘hyperactivity’ by parents.

Planning your child’s day with some thought can help. Making sure, for instance, she has an opportunity to let off steam with outdoor exercise and doesn’t spend too long in front of the TV if that makes her grumpy or more excitable.

Help her to focus on and finish one activity at a time. Instilling safety drills, for instance about crossing roads, and making them concentrate on what’s happening demands patience and consistency from you.

What can parents do?

Because they’re naturally inquisitive all children will get themselves into dangerous situations. Often, they have just not yet developed the skill of looking ahead to what could happen or their eye-hand coordination may still be underdeveloped.

Most parents soon learn how hazardous the home can be and lock away medicines, sharp tools, matches and household chemicals such as furniture polish. They fit safety-latches on windows and gates on stairs, make sure tablecloths don’t hang down and kettles are out of reach.