Our son had dreadful allergies when he was a toddler. These always lead to terrible ear infections with associated symptoms. Pain however, was not one of the symptoms we ever knew about- he had the most incredible pain threshold (and still does now as an adult!) . On 2 separate occasions we only knew that he had been experiencing severe earache when his fever broke because his eardrum had burst and the pressure was released with all the exudate. You can just imagine how terrible I felt when our GP said his eardrum had burst! He just did not cry about pain. We became very intune with other symptoms like bright red cheeks, rubbing or pulling his ears, sucking his thumb extra hard or a fever that we weren’t able to keep down. He also became more ‘clingy’ and needed extra physical contact and only wanted to cuddle with dad or mom. By learning these other symptoms and his body language we instinctively knew an ear infection was brewing and were able to treat it quickly. Because of our experience with our son, I think I have become a little more aware to look for other symptoms that may also point to pain, even when there’s no vocal signs expressed by the child.
