Chris X

Brief Outline:

Chris’s daughter sustained a burn to the palm of her hand after she touched the counter of an electric hob which was hot. He felt a sense of “immense guilt” because of the burn.

Background:

Chris lives with his wife and their two children. His ethnicity is White British.

More about me...

Chris’s daughter was 2 years old when she burnt the palm of her hand. At the time of the burn, Chris was cooking in the kitchen with his daughter. He picked his daughter up and sat her on the counter of the worktop, something which before the burn Chris would do normally. Whilst briefly looking away to look at the sink, his daughter placed her palm on the hot countertop and then immediately started screaming.

Chris said he managed to stay “quite calm” during this time, and instinctively ran his daughter’s hand under cool water. He held her hand under the running water for 20 minutes, which he said felt like much longer. After phoning his sister, who is a GP, for advice, Chris was told to take his daughter to a hospital nearby which had a children’s burns unit.

Intense feelings of guilt were “kicking in” for Chris at this stage. He felt “adamant” that he was the one to take his daughter to the children’s burns unit because he viewed the accident as “his fault”. Chris and his daughter were seen to at the burn’s unit immediately after they arrived, and he said the care they received was “fantastic”.

The nurses at the children’s burns unit tried to distract Chris’ daughter whilst they removed her dressings to clean the burn. He said the nurse’s professionalism, warmth, and friendliness helped him and his daughter and provided them with some reassurance. Chris did not feel judged by the staff at the burns unit as they reiterated that “these things happen” and that “kids make mistakes”. Though this helped Chris to not feel so judged, he said his feelings of guilt lasted a lot longer than the incident itself.

Chris felt as though he had “failed” as a parent and apologised to his wife because he’d “allowed one of their children to become damaged”. His wife was “really good about it” and offered Chris the emotional support he needed. He felt grateful for her support as he said he was beating himself up enough.

As time went on and his daughter’s burn continued to heal, Chris felt “better about the whole thing”. He said his confidence consistently grew in his daughter’s ability to make a full recovery.

After his daughter was burnt, Chris was hesitant to attend a camping weekend with friends. However, after attending, Chris found that talking to others was helpful and helped him to accept that accidents are normal, some of his friends shared similar anecdotes with him about their children.

Chris wants other parents going through a similar situation to know that feeling guilty is “normal” and feelings that you have “failed as a parent” can be profound. He believes that talking to others about what happened, as well as the passage time, “help enormously”.

Chris X’s daughter burnt the palm of her hand when she touched a hot electric hob.

So, I was on duty as a parent, if you like, and I was in the kitchen and I was cooking – I can’t remember what, this was a little while ago now, that was less relevant – something on, we’ve got one of the glass-top stove things. So, it’s like a flat thing with the circles that glow, and electric top thing. There’s a technical name. And I was cooking and one of the things which I did at that point, which I no longer do, is sit my daughter up on the worktop, so my eldest daughter is in school at this point and my youngest, who sustained the burn injury is not in school yet, she’s too young so she goes to play group occasionally and stuff like that, but she’s often at home in the day. So, I sat her on the side where she would sit there eating, usually prunes out of a packet – that was her favourites thing to do – and I turned my back to look to the sink and she put her whole palm flat on the top of the stove glass top thing that was at full, full temperature, and immediately started screaming.

Chris X appreciates that no one has said anything judgmental about his child’s burn circumstances to him, and instead there had been a “unified message” of understanding.

I never had a single comment that was like, you know, "That was a stupid thing to do", which it was. And I don’t know whether that’s because people realised that I was… I was passing that judgement on myself anyway, but that was not, that was not part of what people were like with me. And again, I think the other thing is just that… the realisation that it wasn’t as big a thing as it was in my head. You know, it was an injury that happened that, fortunately enough, was not bad enough that it, you know, it was lifelong or anything like that. And these things happen, kids do silly things, you know, parents aren’t 100% all the time. And I think that same message came from everywhere – that unified message from, you know, friends I didn’t know that well, to health visitors, to nurses in the hospital, to my own parents – I think the general understanding that people aren’t judging you for this, you know. People know you try your best and try to look after your kids as best you can, but you can only do so much. And that, I think that being that consistent message from lots of people was really helpful.

Chris X experienced “immense guilt” after his daughter was burnt and felt that he had “failed to protect” her.

I had an expectation to have a huge amount of judgement, because that was undoubtedly the emotion I had over the whole of the thing, was that of guilt. Immense guilt, because it was entirely my fault. This child you’re supposed to protect, that you’ve failed to protect at this point, that was the difficult part of it.

I felt extremely guilty. I felt like I’d failed as, you know, the parent in charge at that point. I felt apologetic to my wife that I’d allowed one of my children to become damaged – that is not what I should be doing – I should be doing the opposite. I would imagine some alcohol was consumed I would guess. But yeah, those feelings were very profound in terms of feeling like a total failure. And that just immense feeling of guilt, and that feeling of if I could have made this happen to me rather than her, you know, a two-year-old child, you’d want that to happen every time. So, it was, yeah, that was the beginning of kind of, I suppose, trying to process it mentally, the situation.

Chris X said his wife had been “immensely supportive” when their daughter was burnt and reassured him that “these things happen”.

She was really good about it. Which I, with hindsight would have always expected her to be, because we do share the work of parenting reasonably down the middle. So, it’s not like it was, don’t know what I’m trying to say, no, she was very good about it, and she was trying to be reassuring that these things happen and that kind of thing. But she was, it would have been easy to imagine her being angry, but she wasn’t. And she obviously, I mean, there would be no benefit to that anyway, but she could obviously see that I was, like, negatively impacted by the whole thing. So, yeah, she wanted to know what happened, I explained what happened um, and I think probably she was reassuring, and I think probably the reality is she’s done the whole thing of putting the child on the countertop thing – I think she’s done that as well and, you know, she probably said something like that. Because it was something that WE did. It was a kind of a routine thing to do. So, yeah, it was fine. She’s been immensely supportive throughout the whole thing.

It was helpful because I didn’t need anybody else beating me up, because I was already beating myself up enough. It would almost have not made any difference anyway because I was so disappointed in myself that it wouldn’t have made any difference whether anybody else had been any more disappointed anyway.

Chris X felt relieved that the healthcare practitioners treating his daughter were not judgmental.

I think probably the staff gave the impression that they had children or had children that had grown up and that concept of, you know “You can only do so much”, you know you can only protect kids to a certain degree, and things happen and they do, you know, accidents happen, kids make mistakes, you know, people look the other way, all that sort of stuff, and these things happen. They very much gave that, you know, I didn’t feel judged by them at all. And, of course, you think, you know, they work in a burn’s unit with children, that’s what they see. So, they were good in that regard.

After his daughter was burnt, Chris X was hesitant to attend a camping weekend with family friends because he knew it would “come up in discussion”. However, talking to other parents helped him to realise that “these things happen”.

And, of course, as you see more people in life, so, as I spoke to my parents and my wife’s parents and then friends we’ve got with kids, when people come back at you and say, you know, this is not a specific example but they say, you know “Oh yeah, I remember when somebody dropped our child in the bath with no water in it” and all those sorts of stuff, and I know other people that things have happened. You know, we know people personally who, the mother fell down the stairs with the child in her arms and the child broke its leg, and it’s the same, that same feeling of you should protect, but you can’t all the time.

Well, we had, it was in summertime, and we had a camping weekend planned with lots of families from the same school and I absolutely did not want to go. The concept of being-, because my daughter had such an obvious dressing situation that was, you know, at this point it covered all of-, she’s only small but it covered all of her forearm, so it was really obvious and, of course, therefore everybody asked the question of “What’s happened? Has she broken her wrist or broken a bone or something?” And I didn’t want to go because I was profoundly-, these feelings of guilt and failure and stuff and I didn’t want to go because I knew it would come up in discussion. But, actually, it was probably quite a good thing because it was a bit like ripping a plaster off – you were totally immersed in this scenario, every single person there was a parent, so everybody had the same attitude, which is that, you know, you can do what you can do but, you know, everybody’s done something that’s gone wrong, or whatever, so that was really useful, I think because I was just so immersed in it. And, of course, then the other thing as well is that lots of people in the community we live knew about it, so it was no longer something that could, you know that I could hide away from, and it just is one of those things. And I think all that helped as well. But, yeah, like you said, people are very, I think that was the standard response, they found out what happened and then they give you back “Oh yeah, that reminds me of when…” or “When I was a child, my parents …” like, you know “I fell out of the car when it was going three miles an hour because I wasn’t strapped in” or you know, there’s an endless supply of these stories of things that have happened to kids because, you know, they don’t look after themselves very well. So, these things happen. But that was all helpful.

I think other people’s shared experiences, other parents shared experiences, where they have felt guilty too for things that have happened. Even for things that are more minor, you know. You just, I could have prevented that happening if I’d just done this, or whatever, put this away, so, yeah, I think that helps a lot.

The shared experiences?

Yeah.

Of these experiences?

It’s almost the inevitability that, at some point, you will fail to prevent something from happening.