While all injuries seem sad and tragic, when it comes to kids, accidents seem all the more tragic and sad. And while the law itself is the same regardless of whether dealing with a child or an adult, there are things about when a child is injured that make the case a bit different than it would originally be, when an adult is injured.
Diagnosing Injuries
One big difference is in the diagnosis and treatment of a child’s injuries. All children mature and grow at different rates. Likewise, they all may heal at different rates.
On the one hand, we often hear that a child’s body recovers quickly from injury, and is more able to “bounce back” from an injury, and that is true. But on the other hand, an injury can prevent a child’s body from growing and maturing as it should, because the child’s body is still developing.
Making matters worse, many of the long-term injuries that children may sustain can take years to determine whether they actually do heal or not. So, for example, if a child hurts his leg, we won’t know if, in time, the child will “grow out of” the injury and be fine, or whether the injury will cause longer-term disabilities.
After a surgery, for example, if a child has pain or immobility, it often isn’t known whether that is a symptom of the surgery, growing pains, or something else.
Missed School – And Work
Children who have serious injuries may have to miss school. And that can mean parents who have to miss work (and thus income) to care for them, an injury that is compensable for parents whose kids are injured in an accident.
Communicating Pain and Injuries
Another problem in diagnosing children, especially much younger ones, is the inability of some children to properly and fully express what they are feeling. Many children may not tell doctors how he or she is feeling, or may not be able to express pain the way an adult does.
That can lead to things being omitted from medical records, or doctors, at least at first, making inaccurate diagnosis. While you can say that an adult “would have told his doctor if he felt that much pain,” you can’t say the same thing about a younger child. That means medical records don’t always tell the full story, when it comes to injuries to children.
Who is to Blame?
Oftentimes, kids get blamed for their own injuries—they were “playing too rough,” or they were in an area that they shouldn’t have been in. In cases where kids hurt other kids, it’s often the children who are blamed. But in many cases, these injuries come from a lack of supervision or a failure to secure property to keep kids out of dangerous premises.
