If you have multiple kiddos at home, stop whatever you’re doing for just five minutes to read this article from yesterday’s New York Times.

“When a Child Gets Hurt, a Sibling May Be at Risk” examines the idea of “accident-proneness” and whether some kids are more likely to experience a serious injury than others.

There are some facts that are well-known here: “boys are injured more often than girls, and children with attention problems have higher rates of injury.” (You moms of multiple boy children are thinking, “Um, duh!”) But all parents should be alert for this, because accidental injury is the leading cause of death among children.

But the most interesting finding was regarding sibling risk (emphasis ours):

Dr. Johnston noticed some things that seemed worth following up. Injuries seemed to cluster chronologically in families: someone would get hurt, then another family member would show up soon after with an apparently unrelated injury.

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.

These are not cases of abuse! These are unintentional injuries: a fall, a burn, a bike accident. But any accident that warrants a hospital trip can cause what is essentially a kid-sized version of post-traumatic stress disorder.

So read the article, and maybe talk to your pediatrician about it. Accidents happen, but you sure don’t want a simple accident to set off other ones in your family like dominos. No me gusta!