How to help you kids understand their bodies when ill

[inglese]

Ugh
Just cancelled a night out as dd8 was feeling ropey
Headache and dodgy tummy
How bad is your head?
I don't know
Do you think you are going to be sick?
I don't know

How is your tummy now?
Idk
Do you think you need a poo?
IDK
Better or worse
I don't know

How do you teach them?!

Her older bro was the same?

Could you ask them to rate it out if 5?

Lollipop stick. Smiley Face on one end, frowning face on the other, 5 lines in between.

Is your tummy smiley or hurty? See if they will point to the stick.

Might not work - but it's worth a try

I’m not sure that’s something children can rate until they’ve had more experience of being ill.
Maybe 13?
my 11yo last week looked a bit leaky in the way to school, said she felt ‘okay’ and then threw up 3 times in the next hour!

I think it’s just experience that helps them learn this mainly. I think ideas like rating above definitely help them describe but they just haven’t been through this as often as we have so can’t tell you if ‘it’s bad’ or not. Mind when you were a kid and the summer felt like forever? They can’t remember well the bad sickness they had last winter, for example, in the way we can.

That said, my 4yr old impresses me sometimes with her ability to describe sickness, she will say ‘my head feels like it’s got a slug in it’ But both she and older sibling have fooled me after a vomiting bug when they think they want to eat soon after. Then I remember they can’t understand yet what their bodies are telling them.

I think it's usually more practical to tell them to sit on the toilet for a few minutes to see whether they need to poo than to ask them whether they think they might need to.

Also ask when they last pooed to guage whether it's constipation or diarrhea.

Get them to drink water and ask questions about whether they drank water earlier with dinner/ at school (dehydration could explain both headache and tummy ache)

Find out whether the headache and tummy ache are actually not physical at all but worry about you going out by asking sideways questions about worries (although often children don't know they're worried and definitely don't know that it's causing what they're describing as physical symptoms).

It's extremely hard to answer "how bad is" questions although an 8 year old without any learning disabilities might well manage rating their pain/ discomfort on a numerical scale with visual aids (like the lolly stick idea).

All useful stuff
Thank you

A paediatric nurse told me most kids just can't do this. And if they do know they're feeling ill, they're likely to say it's a tummy ache for pretty much everything when they're younger, then as they get older, it's headache for everything! So it's not just yours, it's pretty universal.