If a kid tells you they are in pain, listen to them.
It doesn’t matter how young they are, or how strange their problem might seem. Listen to them. They trusted you enough to let you know, and even if you can’t fix it or make any accomadations, you can at least let them know that you are listening. Because without this, kids are taught from a very young age that their pain doesn’t matter.
When I was 5, a few weeks after my birthday I was in a car accident. We were rear-ended, and I, being a child, was in the backseat, so I got the brunt of the impact. Fast forward a few months and I’m starting Kindergarten. I was never in preschool, so this was my first time at school.
My teacher would often have us sit on the floor for lessons. Every day we would sit on the floor for probably at least an hour or two. And it was horrendously painful on my back. Sitting on the floor had never hurt before, but ever since the accident more than ten minutes was just too much.
So I spoke up. I told her sitting on the floor hurt my back. Her response? “You’re five. You don’t have back pain.”
And that was it. I couldn’t sit in a chair, I just had to endure hours of that, and that was normal and okay apparently. I didn’t mention it again.
When we started learning how to read and write we would all sit on the floor in lines and trace letters on the back of the person in front of us. This became a problem for me instantly. Ever since the accident whenever someone touched my back I would violently flinch and start crying.
So I spoke up. I asked the teacher if I could sit out because it was literal torture for me. She said I was five, I didn’t have back pain, I was making it up and I just had to suck it up and deal with it.
So I did. Throughout my years in elementary school I sat on the floor without complaint, even though the pain only got worse as I got older. But this was normal, right? Everyone’s back hurts like this, I told myself. Otherwise my kindergarten teacher would have helped. I was just overreacting.
Then I got to middle school and started P.E., which involved multiple exercises and activities that, with the state of my back, were a living hell. I didn’t speak up. This was normal now. It hurt, but I got through it because this was the normal and pain was just something to live with. Something to ignore.
In freshman year I was diagnosed with severe scoliosis. My spine literally looks like a question mark. But even knowing that I have scoliosis, when I had exercises in P.E. that were painful, I kept my mouth shut. No one would listen, after all. No one would care.
But what if that teacher had listened? What if she had let me sit in a chair, what if I had asked for reasonable accommodations throughout school? My scoliosis got this bad specifically because I was doing things that made it worse, all of which were things in school that I probably could have asked to get out of if I had even considered that pain might be a reason to stop doing something. If I had just asked for help, my scoliosis might actually be manageable. But that teacher taught me that my pain was invalid, and no one was ever going to listen. Before long I didn’t even listen to myself.
It’s been over a decade, and I’m still learning how to speak up. I regularly forget that pain is a signal to stop doing something, and if someone asks me to do something that is going to hurt my back I don’t even consider telling them I can’t. When I was young I advocated for myself, but because of her I have completely forgotten how and relearning is rough.
So please. If a kid says they’re hurting, listen. I promise you they know their own body better than you, and silencing them can hold them back for decades.
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