On Wednesday before I went to Ireland I had a scare in the daycare. We had taken the kids out to play in the 3-year-old patio, because it was in the sun and therefore would be warmer than the normal patio they play in. Now playtime was over, and Sylvia, the teacher, had taken the majority of the kids into the lunch room, while Ana, the assistant, and I rounded up a few stragglers. I went to the back corner to get Joaquin, who was sitting on the stump, and lifted him to his feet. When I set him down he took off at a run towards the rest of the group and ran smack into the side of one of the metal bars set up for them to swing on. He immediately started wailing, and he hit it so hard I was sure he'd hurt himself, but didn't see anything when I looked at his forehead.
I looked up at Ana to explain what had happened--she hadn't seen anything--shrugging about the lack of any mark. Then she exclaimed "sangre!" and I looked down to see blood streaming down his face, from under his bangs. I grabbed toilet paper, pressed it to his head, then scooped him up and quickly took him inside to Sylvia. Cleaned off, the cut wasn't too bad. It was quite deep, but not deep enough to need stitches, or so they decided. Being a head wound, it just bled a lot. I was quite shaken; it's been a while since I've seen that much blood and while normally I don't have a problem with it, the whole situation was a bit traumatic. For one thing all the blood had made it look worse than it was, but the biggest thing was the problem of communicating--I couldn't explain exactly what had happened or explain my thoughts and I think talking about something is one way we process it and make it less scary. Sylvia and Ana saw my face of shock, "No pasa nada" they said over and over, "It's okay, don't worry" but that almost made it worse because I became more frustrated with my inability to say "really, I'm fine it's just I thought it was worse than it was, and I haven't seen that much blood in a while." Also I was expecting more of a reaction from the adults. In the U.S. daycares (or at least where I worked), if a kid gets the smallest graze or scratch it has to be documented. Any accident is written down and witnesses have to declare what happened and sign...all stuff to avoid lawsuits. Here the attitude was one of "kids fall down, and get bumps and cuts, and it is okay, it is a part of being a kid." "No pasa nada." No problem. Once they made sure it wasn't too serious, they stopped worrying about it. I couldn't forget it quite so easily, but then it was time for lunch, so I was kept busy getting the little ones to eat, and that distracted me a bit. Phew. What a day.