I have a six-month-old who has learned to crawl and is eagerly pulling to stand on furniture. She’s not good at it and falls down a lot. After she hit her head hard enough to cry about it two days in a row, I started supervising her more actively when she’s in her play area, and I’ve ordered her a helmet. The head bonking is clearly unpleasant, but is it also bad for her? I’ve been reassured by friends that their pediatricians say this is normal and not to worry about it, but in light of your recent writing about sports and head injuries, it seems surprising that this kind of head trauma would somehow be exempt. Is there any data on this kind of falling and head bonking?
—Ruthie
It’s completely understandable to be concerned about your child’s safety as they explore their surroundings, especially when they’re learning to crawl and stand. It’s a significant milestone in their development, but it does come with its fair share of tumbles and falls.
Children are indeed prone to falling as they master the skills of crawling and pulling themselves up to stand and eventually walk. While these incidents can be unsettling, especially when they result in crying or visible distress, it’s important to contextualize the nature of these falls. The mechanics and impact forces involved when an infant or toddler falls are substantially different from those experienced by teens or adults. The distance of the fall is typically much shorter, and the speed at which they fall is slower, due to their proximity to the ground and their relatively slower movements. This creates much less force than is produced by the high-school sports collisions that have driven the discussions about concussions and their long-term effects.
While the idea of using a helmet for added protection comes from a place of wanting to ensure your child’s safety, there’s no evidence to support it. There’s no evidence that children are at any long-term risk from obtaining the routine bumps and bruises that come part and parcel with learning to stand and walk. You may see infants in helmets, but those are nearly always for head shape remodeling and not designed to protect from fall impact. Infants and toddlers should wear helmets when on bikes, where the forces of impact can be increased, but wearing these helmets routinely has not been studied and may have deleterious effects on development due to added weight.
Enjoy your newly mobile little one. You can protect her by making her environment softer and gating stairs where falls could be more dangerous. But part of the lesson of learning to walk is falling, and part of that is banging one’s head from time to time. Take solace in the fact that the forces that produces are not enough for causing brain damage.
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