Helping 4yo with anxiety over cuts and grazes

[LaMadrilena]

I joke about 4yo DD being a drama queen over every little cut and scrape, but she currently has a (nasty-ish) graze on her elbow and she's hysterical about it several times a day. She can't stand the sight of her own blood (fine with other people's though...).

I've tried sympathy, jollying her along, reassuring her, distracting her, telling her that she needs to think about something else... Nothing works. She refuses to use her arm and says she can't, she just can't. This has gone one for 5 days now, and the scab has lifted slightly today so it's even worse.

I'm certain it's just a playground scrape and nothing worse, although obviously it hurt at the time and may have a bit of a bruise too.

How can I get her to be a bit less terrified of her own blood? She's got years more playground injuries to come!

sympathy from us as we had similar in reception!

we got some of the plain white dressings and let dc decorate them and kept it covered which seemed to help.

we also acknowledged how rubbish it was and how scary it can feel when we hurt ourselves and talked about our scars & how we got them & talked about them in positive ways! Battle wounds all part of our lives etc, were dramatic about it and helped us laugh together.

we also talked about how amazing skin is and what a good job it does & how blood & scabs help healing process etc. we talked about it a lot and kept it all positive didn’t change a lot at the time but fast forward a few years & dc doesn’t get overly upset over scrapes etc now but does still give very regular updates about the state of scabs & ooh it’s nearly healing mommy on a regular basis 😅

hope this helps