Tongue freezes in frost to iron - what to do, how to help a child

Freezing your tongue to iron in winter is a simple matter: the moisture of the tongue in contact with cold metal itself turns into ice and “hooks” the child with an ice object (swing, horizontal bar, door handle, pipe, lock, etc.).

The kid can accidentally touch the iron with his tongue, and maybe just show curiosity, not in vain because he is so strongly forbidden to lick a swing. A minute ago he laughed merrily, and now he is crying from fear and pain. How to save a child from ice captivity?

Video: why tongue sticks to cold metal:

The language freezes to iron - how to save

In no case do not delay the child and do not tear off the metal by force, so you can damage the mucous membrane of the tongue, which will heal for a long time and painfully. And try to reassure him so that he does not injure himself.

The only solution is to warm.

• Breath

The heat in the breath is enough to help thaw the tongue. If the child is already of school age, explain to him how to breathe, exhaling steam on a piece of iron so that the tongue thaws. When the baby is still very small, you will need to “breathe” it from the swing. And do not waste time, as soon as the tongue starts to stick off, deflect the child from the metal, because when you delay the steam from the breath, it can have time to cool and play a bad service - freeze it even harder.

• Water

You can also rescue the child by watering the adhered tongue with warm water. However, this method can rarely be applied - it is hardly at your fingertips a thermos with warm water or a cup of hot tea. But if it is not possible to release the tongue with the help of breathing, it is better to search for water than to tear the child off by force, because this will definitely be a serious injury. Watering a stuck tongue, you will rescue your child in a matter of seconds.

If an accident happened at the playground, take heed of it by asking one of the walking parents to take out warm water. Feel free to ask for help. Of course, it is difficult to think when a native child beats nearby in hysterics, but the main rule of each mother is not to panic. No need to call an ambulance right away. They are unlikely to go to such a call at all, but even in the positive case, neighbors and casual passers-by will already help you while the car arrives.

What is not worth doing (bad advice)

• You can meet on the Internet advice to heat the metal with a lighter. Now imagine if you are ready to bring fire to the face of your child? Forget about this know-how: firstly, you will not heat up the metal in the right place, and secondly, you can injure and even frighten the victim;
• People of the old school sometimes advise, ahem, to urinate at the place of adhesion (analogue of warm water).For aesthetic reasons, we believe that this method can only be used in extreme conditions, if the situation happened somewhere in a deserted taiga in the 30-degree frost and there is no way to be saved;
• Some advise sharply tearing it out of considerations: it is better to hurt, but quickly, the longer, but perhaps painfully. As we already wrote at the beginning, this is absolutely not worth doing - there will definitely be an injury. But what if the child himself twitched and tore a piece of tongue?

What to do if the tongue is still injured

Go home right away, no snow or ice - just bring the infection.

At home, rinse the tongue with warm water and pat with a hydrogen peroxide swab. If the wound is quite large and the blood does not stop, make a gauze swab (wrap cotton wool with a bandage in several layers), moisten it with diluted peroxide and lay on the tongue. If nothing helps (although this is unlikely to happen), call an ambulance or take the child to the nearest hospital.

The next few days, until the mucous membrane is restored, you will have to feed the child with grated food, since the tongue is also actively involved in chewing. Make sure that food is not hot, it can also hurt.

If, over the next two to three days, you do not see a positive trend in the healing of the tongue or, even worse, it began to get dark - go to the doctor right away.

What to do so that the child does not want to touch the iron in the cold

Bans and moralizing often do not work. Remember yourself in childhood: the more forbidden, the more interesting. And therefore, so that the child satisfies his curiosity, but does not end up in this painful situation, there are such brave parents who conduct such an experiment with the child:

1. Something metal (a spoon, an iron ruler, a wrench) is brought out to frost in advance, with which you can then return to the house.
2. They give him a frozen piece of iron, make him touch his tongue.
3. When the "clutch" occurred, the young experimenter is trying to pull the frozen metal. He obviously will not succeed.
4. Release the baby with warm water.
5. Discuss the results of the experiment. The baby's attention is especially drawn to the fact that with a cold spoon on your tongue you can go into the house and warm up, but you won’t be able to do it with a swing.

Such a simple experiment, on the one hand, will satisfy the curiosity of a young researcher, and on the other, it will clearly demonstrate what will happen if ... Most likely, the child will no longer be interested in freezing over to swings and horizontal bars.

READ ALSO: First aid for a child in emergency situations

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