"Tell your children the truth and use creative distractions to ease needle fears"

"Tell your children the truth and use creative distractions to ease needle fears"

Source: The Vancouver Sun

Needles are terrifying, especially for young children. When a nurse in latex gloves is coming towards you with a shiny sharp needle, it can make anyone jump out of their skin. This year, along with the regular seasonal flu shot, people will be getting an additional one for the H1N1 virus. Children are the worst when it comes to getting shots, but have no fear there are some ways to calm children down, taking the "hurt" away. The key is distraction, get creative and use items such as bubbles, or balloons. Another option is that doctors can apply numbing cream to the area. If your doctor approves, give the child a pain reliever one hour ahead.

What I learned from this article is that people get themselves worked up before having a shot. We over think the whole situation and think that a tiny prick will hurt us. If we forget about everything and focus on something, or a distraction, there is no pain at all and it's over quickly. Children are the worst when it comes to injections because they hear that it is painful from people around them, they see other children crying, and when they see the needle it looks scary.

The way the journalist wrote this story was very quick and to the point. I wish the journalist would have listed more options to distract children, or talked to a nurse or doctor to find other options for this situation. This article was strictly written for parent's with young children, but it caught my eye because I've seen so many children terrified of the word or sight of a needle. This year is definitely going to be interesting with the number of shots we have to get.