Baby has repeat accidents under husbands care

[GreeneQueen]

I am writing to ask if I am being unreasonable being concerned about my husbands attitude to the safety of our child. She is 15 months old and has by now suffered 3 accidents with impact to the head under his care. First two were when she was 8 months old. One, he left her unbuckled in the pram knowing that she is able to stand up. As she stood up in the pram she swung it forward and fell hitting her head on ceramic tiles. Second, he left her unsupervised on the couch and she fell backwards from sitting and hit her head on ceramic tiles. The third one was at 15 months when she newly developed the skill to climb chairs. He saw her standing on the chair and didn’t think to go up and ensure that she remains safe. Seconds later she was on the floor having hit her head on ceramic tiles. Each time there was a lot of crying and distress and a bruise. Thankfully no major consequence although I do believe that repeat impact to the head of this magnitude is not without consequences to the brain. Each time she would have been at around 1.5 meters above the ground before falling onto a hard surface. He will say things like - look at her, she is fine - after she is settled from crying. He is of the type who says that children should be free to explore and I’m a helicopter mother. This time he also said that now he will know not to leave her standing on the chair but I feel like this should be anticipated and not learnt by the parent at the potential cost of the child’s health. There were several other near misses with her being left on the couch unsupervised when she was able to roll or later when she was left unbuckled in a high chair and stood up in it. Can I please have some second opinions. For me these are preventable serious accidents and simply not acceptable. I am worried leaving her under his care.

That's what I do? That's 'just' life for some.

er no, my child didn’t fall out of a pram/cot/chair once because I was there/they were strapped in/they were correctly supervised./ the cot was raised as needed.

Poor parental supervision on his part....3 times on tiles....he is at something else instead of caring for the child. And with one child he has no excuse. He is making little of the child's welfare by saying you helicopter too much. Falling on a soft surface is dropping the risk but not a ceramic floor.

Take her for brain scans, these types of falls do cause trauma especially with soft heads - like sports traumas-do proper investigation and do not leave your child with him - he is not safe.

This.

And you'll worry about leaving him because he'll have weekend visitation, when you won't be able to make sure she's safe.

There's a huge difference between encouraging exploration and being a danger to your child. He's either too thick to understand the difference or he's a sociopath.

What consequences have you put in place to communicate to him that you will not accept his disregard for basic safety?
Have you told your family or his about these incidents?

Do not have another baby with this dangerous man.

Flooring is not the issue here.

Yes.

And do not lie to doctors to protect him.

The time may well come when you will need the documentation of his failure to provide basic supervision.

Agree.

You need to take the child to be examined.

You need to tell the doctors exactly what happened.

Sadly, you may not be aware of other incidents.

I agree.

All over the warmer parts of the world people live in homes with ceramic tile flooring. Toddlers crawl and walk on ceramic tiles.

They do not all end up with head injuries.

This is because like toddlers in carpeted homes, their parents amd caregivers supervise them.

1.5m? From a couch? I'd have to take a run and jump to get on to the sofa to sit down at that height.

I thought this. Sometimes i see upsetting posts where the OP never comes back and I wonder if the horrified reactions are being deliberately provoked.

Thank you for all the comments.
Forgive me, I meant the 1.5 meters as the distance between her head and the floor, not the height of the surface she was on. She is 80 cm tall so combined with the height of the pram or chair seat is a probably closer to 1.3 meters.

It sounds absolutely nothing like AI, it sounds like a stressed human. If you’re going to AI hunt can you spend some time using AI or reading about it so that you have a better idea of what it actually sounds like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

I’ll start with saying all parents will have different tolerance levels of allowing “risky” behaviour, and generally studies have shown men have higher tolerance than women.

However, not strapping in is just lazy/not allowing the child to explore.

So, on balance, yes he has poor judgement, but three examples of falls isn’t suggesting to me incompetence, but a parent who is learning.

I guess it’s more important to judge if you think he is learning, or just uninterested in improving/keeping your child safe.

I was agreeing with a previous poster.

@GreeneQueen do you care to comment on what people have been saying, such as are you going to take the advice and get your child seen by a doctor, and have you considered this may not be accidental or at the very least this is neglect?

This definitely warrants social services involvement. That’s a lot of head injuries in a small child. I’m guessing you have never taken her to A&E to be checked because these absolutely would have been flagged as possible abuse. If you haven’t seen them happen with your own eyes, that would also worry me.

You need thick rugs to cover the ceramic tiles. You husband needs to buck up.

Have you actually seen these accidents or is this how he explained her head injuries to you?

My children never had head injuries like you described and 2 in a short amount of time is very worrying. I assume you didn’t go to A&E as otherwise SS would be involved.

exactly what I am thinking

Ok just saw your post on another thread where you said your husband was abusive and you applied for legal separation last summer. Why are you still with him?

I was in the home when they happened doing the cooking or the laundry and heard the noise and was at the scene immediately so I am quite confident about the circumstances and mechanism. The injuries didn’t meet the criteria for head imaging and were managed with observation. She was seen by the GP after the pram accident and it was documented. The social services said that as they were not non-accidental they are not concerned. They also patronisingly told me that bumps happen and I should expect more as the baby develops and becomes more active.

Why are SS involved?

Is there going to be a massive drip fred?

SS are usually involved when a child under 1 has an injury in this case a head injury. My friend’s baby (6 months) rolled out of bed and she went to A&E and they called SS.

Where I live almost all injuries to kids, but particularly head, are reported to HV automatically by the hospital and they liaise with social services. They don’t contact all families but they look at the reports for certain types or frequencies. Head injuries and “preventable” falls are one of them-not because they assume they are all being abused but because it can illustrate where parental help is needed.
DD smacked her head after a changing table incident with ex-nothing untoward (I was there) but they rightfully pointed out she was too mobile to be changed that way any more.

It’s nothing new, when I was a pony mad kid in the 80’s and 90’s I had many falls and things and social services did check that I was genuinely getting bucked off ponies and not being beaten because the frequency of my A&A visits triggered a threshold.

Well I would say some accidents do happen, even with the best of intentions, but the 2 in such quick succession would make me uneasy because I would have hoped after the first one that he’d be watching her like a hawk at least for awhile! And the third one, if he could see her climbing and chose not to intervene or stand to help her then for me thats more concerning than if she had managed to get up there and then fell while he wasn’t looking. Toddlers are so quick, my daughter can climb onto a chair probably quicker than I can, she could easily get up there if I turned my back for 20 seconds and fall, but if he saw she was up there and left her to fall that’s more of a worry.