Alert: Your Crazy Kid Will KILL Your Wimpy Kid

crazyKid

Or words to that effect. This just in from the Times on the summer “trauma season”:

Dr. Johnston and his colleagues studied large populations of children and found that if a child was injured seriously enough to be hospitalized, all the children in that family were at higher risk of injury for the next three months. After three months, the families’ risk returned to normal. In a follow-up prospective study published earlier this year, almost 20 percent of the families had a child injured or re-injured badly enough to need medical attention. The new accidents weren’t necessarily similar to the initial ones — it wasn’t one burn after another.

Holy moly! It’s like the Herculean-baby-brother-life-saving-from-jealous-mother-god-snake-attack story…in reverse!

Moral of the story, folks: Be afraid.

Published by Theodore

Theodore Ross is an editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Saveur, Tin House, the Mississippi Review, and (of course), the Vietnam News. He grew up in New York City by way of Gulfport, MS, and as a teen played the evil Nazi, Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. He lives with his son, J.P. in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a book about Crypto-Jews.

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