4yo doesn't want comforting when hurt

[DLCC]

Dear All

My 4yo DS has recently (in the last 6 months or so) not wanted comforting when he hurts himself. For example, I collected him from school last week and he was running behind a shed, a little girl was running in the opposite direction towards him and neither were looking where they were going and crashed into each other, face first. The little girl burst into tears and my DS welled up, as I bent down to comfort him he was saying, 'No, no, no, your fault', and pushing me away while pulling my hair?! I'm not sure if it was an embarrassed reaction or what. Since then he's tripped over and obviously scraped his knee so I go over to him and ask if he's ok and try and cuddle him but again he either pushes me away or says something along the lines of, 'Don't look at me, I haven't hurt myself', (when he so obviously has) it's really upsetting me and I don't know what's brought it on and how to handle it, all I want to do is comfort him...

My DD is 5 and also does this. It's their self awareness developing. I wouldn't worry about it at all. You might want to comfort him but he's telling you that he doesn't want it. I expect if he really did himself a mischief he'd allow it then.

My 3.5 yo started doing this too. I figure it's embarrassment - she'll run off and hide if she falls over, then be perfectly OK a minute later. I'm pretty sure that if he really felt hurt he'd allow it. I tend to say 'OK, I'll leave you for a minute but I'm here if you need me, then we'll go get your knee cleaned up' or similar. Seems to work for the moment.

Aww that must be really difficult. How about just standing back for a second and saying something like "Ouch, it looked like that hurt" and then let him decide to come to you or not? That way he can decide whether it's more important to 'save face' (or whatever the reason is he doesn't want to admit something hurt) or whether it hurts enough to want some comforting.

My 4 year old DS is also like this. He does not like a fuss when he has hurt himself he says he is fine and just likes to get on with it. He will be comforted if he has really hurt himself badly though, I think he just doesn't like people making a fuss of him.

My eldest did this but I can't remember what age she started it - quite young. If she hurt herself then she hated for anyone to notice or make a fuss or to even mention it and we always presumed it was a saving face thing. I learned to pretend not to notice but to keep an eye on her from a distance and to leave her to come to me if she needed me. I probably got some odd looks in the playgrounds but this suited my DD best and worked for us - sometimes she got up and dusted herself off and sometimes she came to me.

Fast forward however many years (she's now 11 and a sweet thing but can be quite self-conscious) and we still do the same thing. If she hurts herself then I will just subtly keep an eye on her and at some point, when she's got her back to everyone else (having pretended that she's absolutely fine to them, even if she has blood pouring from her knee/nose/wherever), she'll look at me and her little face will crumple and she'll come to me and we'll quietly go and sort her out.

DD2, meanwhile, wants attention if she even thinks she might be about to hurt herself

Thanks so much for all your replies, when he bumped into that little girl the other day it really was a full on face smash and his little face crumpled up, bottom lip came out and you could see he really wanted to cry, but he just would not let me hug him, he just kind of stomped off ahead of me? and each time I asked him if he was ok he just cut me off mid sentence saying, 'Yes, I'm fine, I'm not hurt'....
Maybe I'll just have to say to him that I'm here if he needs me and if he wants a cuddle in a bit...
Up until a few months ago he would have been the first to come and put his knee/nose/face to me to, 'kiss it better'....