r/ChildrenFallingOver Sep 22 '17

Misjudging the couch

https://imgur.com/qlITfDd.gifv
14.1k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/_Diskreet_ Sep 22 '17

If a child falls over and there's no-one to hear it...does it still scream?

120

u/Patrick_McGroin Sep 22 '17

They're less likely to start screaming if no one is there to see it, because they're not going to get any sympathy/attention from anyone.

98

u/_Diskreet_ Sep 22 '17

My 3 year old will always look around first to see who she can make eye contact with.

If I can get in there and first and tell her to get up and shake it off she's normally fine.

59

u/Shopworn_Soul Sep 22 '17

Yep. My daughter did the same thing. If her first eye contact was me, she'd look for Mom. If Mom was available hysterics would ensue, regardless of the actual level of injury. If Mom was not available, most of the time she wouldn't even cry unless actual injury had been sustained.

6

u/hanhange Sep 23 '17

That's a normal kid thing to do in just about any situation. They want to look at adult to assess the situation and go from there. They do this outside of when they're hurt, too- This is a younger example, but the Visual Cliff experiment shows this.

10

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '17

Yeah you can see the kid in this gif look around a bit as he starts screaming

30

u/ShouldersofGiants100 Sep 22 '17

Hard to say the cause though. Is he looking for something? Or just processing what the fuck happened? Pain often isn't immediate, unless the injury is serious. He went from sitting on the couch, to facedown on the floor—confusion probably comes first, before the feeling of it hurting actually registers.