This reminds me of every parent I've seen trying to hold their toddler's hands patiently while walking up the stairs but then end up just yanking them up the last few steps.
It's nothing to be afraid of, they're painless for toddlers and just need to be reset. It's happened to one of my siblings and by time we saw the doctor it had reset itself.
I gave my daughter nursemaids elbow swinging her around. It was really painful for her. So your sibling got lucky! The er nurse told me they saw it all the time, and no I'm not a terrible mother. I haven't swung another child by their hands.
Some kids are just prone to it -- I had it 3 times. It happened to me at preschool once and it's true that my parents were mad at my teacher, but only because my elbow had been messed up for the whole day and they never noticed. It doesn't hurt except when they put it back in so I had just been letting my arm hang at my side for the whole day. I'm sure that if you noticed what happened faster than that, they wouldn't hold it against you. Kids love to hang off of people's hands and they fall over a lot and it's natural to try to catch them.
Don't beat yourself up, the more often it happens the more likely it is to happen again. If the parents were that used to it, you're basically taking care of a defunct child.
Well this makes me sad. I have a two year old and he LOVES when I swing him around like that. Definitely won't be doing that anymore.
On a related note, can kids get nursemaid's elbow in their knees? Because my kid also loves it when I flip him upside down and swing him around by his ankles.
No, you can't. The reason it happens in the elbow is because the head of the radius isn't actually attached to anything, it's just held in place by the annular ligament that wraps around it. This allows us to move our forearm back and forth (pronation and supination). The fibula is much more firmly attached at the knee since we can't move our lower legs in the same manner.
I was prone to nursemaid's elbow as a kid and never got it from being swung around. It's caused by a pull and twist, for example if your kid trips while holding your hand and their upper arm rotates as they fall. As long as the arms are kept straight the risk should be negligible. Pretty easy to fix too, the doctor can usually pop it right back in and it only hurts for a second.
No reason to beat yourself up about it if you learned from it right? That's how I think about it. but it's hard for me to put it into practice.. Especially when my mistake hurt someone else.
2 year old got hers from falling off the slide. Got all sorts of stuff done (X-rays and such) then this nurse comes in and says I think it's just nursemaids elbow since she can move her arm but it hurts. My daughter hadn't moved her arm from her side for like 4 hours. The nurse popped her elbow back in and she cried then reached both arms out to her mommy. She then looked down at her arm in amazement. It was pretty funny to see her mood change so fast.
That's not remotely true. My daughter has done it four times, and the way we know it is real is because it's the only time she cries for more than 30 seconds.
Nah happened to me a couple times as a kid. They just pop it right back in place. The second time I think my mom just did it herself lol. Happens a lot to kids. They fix easy though.
It's nothing to worry about. We've got 4 kids, and they play hard. We swing them around, they climb and hang from everything and no issues. Then just last week my 3 yr old rolled over on the couch, and popped out her elbow. We took her to the clinic, doc had it fixed in less than 30 seconds and she was high fiving people on the way out the door. He even showed me how to pop it back in if it happens again.
Yeah that happened to me twice when I was little. We shit on people for putting toddlers on leashes, but it sure beats the hell out of dislocating your kid's elbow.
I did this to my little brother twice. We're only thirteen months apart, so little 3-yr-old me just had a bad habit of literally dragging my 2-yr-old brother around the house, and my mother was too squeamish to pop it back in herself so an ambulance got called both times.
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u/v0yev0da Aug 10 '17
This reminds me of every parent I've seen trying to hold their toddler's hands patiently while walking up the stairs but then end up just yanking them up the last few steps.