Parents share the wildest reasons their kids ended up in the ER

From ingesting paperclips to superhero-fueled flying attempts: hospital trips with kids are no laughing matter… except when they absolutely are. Please note, some names have been changed. 

A sweet little toddler sits up on an exam table in a doctors office as her female doctor conducts a routine check-up. The little girl is dressed casually and appears happy as her doctor engages with her.

For over 60 years, Children’s Panadol has been helping children of all ages with mild pain and fever.

Parenthood is just one grand adventure, right? It’s one that has ups and downs, keeps us on our toes, keeps us guessing and every so often leads us to places we never thought we’d visit - like the emergency room. 

While we often associate the ER with serious situations, there’s no doubt that kids will be kids and sometimes you’re rushing your child to the hospital for something urgently ridiculous, rather than life-threatening. We asked real Kidspot parents to share the weirdest, wildest and funniest reasons they found themselves starting a sentence with “Well you see, doctor, what happened was…” 

The mysterious case of the missing wedding ring

If you were to do a straw poll of funny reasons kids wound up in hospital, the most common answer would probably be “because they stuck something up their nose.” From popcorn to peanuts, LEGO to legumes, there’s no shortage of nostril-sized objects kids have tried to insert, usually just to see if it fits. “My daughter stuck raisins up her nose,” recalls one mum. “Not just one raisin, but several. We waited in ER so long they started to rehydrate and eventually fell out.” 

But another mum recalls a particularly traumatic experience where she spent a very anxious day looking for her wedding ring. “I had taken it off the night before and popped it on my bedside table and it simply disappeared,” Kate says. “It wasn’t under the bed, it wasn’t in my drawers, it wasn’t anywhere. I completely panicked and didn’t know how I was going to tell my husband.” 

It was only when she got a call from daycare around 3pm that she finally got to the bottom of it. Her son had been crying and his nose was all bloody and swollen and they didn’t know why. A quick examination in the car on the way home got to the bottom of it. “I think he put the ring up his nostril while he was lying on my bed waiting for me to get ready that morning,” Kate says. “We went straight to the ER and after about an hour they managed to tweezer it out but the diamond had cut all the skin inside his nose so it was very sore and bloody for awhile. I did feel very sorry for him, but I also felt sorry for the ring - what a journey it had been on!” 

The fart-powered flight

Also up there with ‘most common reasons your kid sends you to the ER’ would be bodily functions. While a bad bout of gastro is no laughing matter, sometimes a hospital visit is nothing but toilet humour. 

Jason’s son, Sam was six, “just the right age where there’s nothing funnier than passing wind,” he says. “He convinced his three-year-old sister Maggie that she could fly if she produced a big enough fart.” Determined to prove him right, the kids climbed to the top of the cubby house where Maggie gave it her all, only to come crashing to earth with a scream, a thud and a snap. Thankfully her ankle was only fractured, not broken and Jason says there were a few stifled smiles from the hospital staff when they asked how it happened.

For Cassie, a bout of trapped wind was the cause of her rush to the emergency room, convinced her daughter Isabella had appendicitis. “She was screaming in pain and was writhing around, unable to sleep,” Cassie remembers. “We rocked up to the ER at midnight, Bella hysterical, clutching her stomach. They triaged us and we were waiting for a hospital bed for about an hour when she let out the biggest fart you have ever heard. It echoed around the waiting room and it smelled just horrendous, but immediately after she said, ‘I feel better mummy, can we go home now?’ Safe to say we got out of there as quickly as possible.” 

Culinary crusades

Food exploration is a normal part of childhood development but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely carefree. 

“My son, Caleb was one of those kids who put everything in their mouths,” says Ellie. “Toys, shoes, leaves, sticks, you name it, in it went.” One day Ellie was working from home with Caleb tottering around alongside her. “He wandered over to the desk and began inspecting all my stationary when before I knew it, he’d swallowed a paperclip. And not a little one, like a giant, Microsoft Word Clippy style paperclip!” 

Ellie says she didn’t really know what to do but took him up to emergency. “They gave him some bread and jam and strips of cotton wool to wrap around the clip and it worked - it passed through his system naturally.” 

For mum Amy, it wasn’t so much what her daughter did put in her mouth, but what she didn’t. “We used to have small colourful magnets on our fridge,” Amy recalls. “I was sure my daughter had swallowed one as she was crawling around near the fridge while I was cooking and I knew it was there but then suddenly it wasn’t.” 

Amy says she checked everywhere for the magnet - under the fridge, in the adjoining cupboard - and all over her daughter’s clothes. “I was convinced she had swallowed it so I took her up to the ER for an x-ray… after we were triaged and while we were waiting, I changed her clothes and found the magnet stuck to the inside zip of her onesie.” 

Children’s Panadol is gentle on tummies while being tough on fevers and can start to reduce fever in just 15 minutes*. It is effective for temporary relief of fever & pain associated with teething, earache, headache, immunisation and cold & flu symptoms.

Always read the label and follow the directions for use. Incorrect use could be harmful.

* Temple AR, Temple BR and Kuffner EK. Dosing and antipyretic efficacy of acetaminophen in children. Clinical Therapeutics 2013; 35: 1361-75

Originally published as Parents share the wildest reasons their kids ended up in the ER