Medical Study: Mommy Kisses on Boo-Boos Are Ineffective

[FLPanhandle]

Did you fall and get a boo-boo? Let Mommy kiss it. Mommy kisses are super good at making you feel better, right?

Wrong! My mother lied to me! And so did yours and everyone else's mothers! According to the results of a study published in the Journal of Evaluation in Medical Practice, mommy kisses have no discernible healing effect on minor injuries.

The study tested 943 toddler and mother pairings in outpatient clinics in Ottawa, Ontario. The examiners induced self-imposed injuries on toddlers, who sought maternal first aid after getting hurt. Sean Davis The Federalist acquired a copy of the full text of article, which describes the experimental procedure:

To induce head boo-boos, a piece of chocolate was placed under a low table edge and the child would be allowed to crawl to the candy. Invariably, the child would then stand to eat the chocolate and would strike his or her head on the table edge. All tables were constructed of soft wood (pine or fir) and edges were appropriately rounded enough to guarantee that skin would not be broken. Hand boo-boos were induced by placing a favourite object (lovey) of the child just out of reach on a counter behind a heated coil. Attempts to obtain the lovey would result in a noxious thermal stimulus to the fingertips. The coil was heated to 50 degrees Celsius (120 F) in order to produce a significant but non-damaging stimulus.

Not only were the resulting mommy kisses ineffective, they actually harmed the children by necessarily depriving the toddlers of more productive uses of maternal time:

Second, maternal resources are very limited, and time spent on delivering ineffective kisses to boo-boos means that maternal attention is not devoted to other activities that have clearly been shown to be beneficial to toddlers, such as the introduction of algebraic functions and the teaching of conversational Mandarin [8].

Davis suspects that the editors of the journal have fallen for a hoax. But given that the joke is given away in the abstract, I think that it's more likely that the editors knowingly participated in a prank.

http://www.neatorama.com/neatobambino/2016/01/01/Medical-Study-Mommy-Kisses-on-Boo-Boos-Are-Ineffective/
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Introduction of Algebraic functions and the teaching of conversational Mandarin

[Scuba]

1. Bullshit. The placebo effect is well documented.

[Brickbat]

2. IIRC, maternal comfort has been shown to decrease pain; as satire, this is pretty weak.

[bvf]

10. Agreed. The whole website is equally lame. n/t

[yeoman6987]

3. Ruin everything that is good

Sometimes I can't wait to get off this train. No lying occurs. A kiss from mom after a fall proves comfort and support knowing you are hurt. Gosh is anything sacred anymore?

[csziggy]

4. What mothers need is a tube of magic cream

My MIL had a tube of something - even she was not sure what it was since the label wore off about the time my husband got into secondary school - that she used for boo-boos. I first saw it when the oldest of MIL's grandchildren came inside with an insect bite. MIL applied her magic cream to the spot and instantly the child stopped crying and was satisfied that all was well.

At that point the magic cream was probably 25 years old. MIL used it recently on one of her great grandsons and it is still effective, close to 60 years since the tube was originally purchased. MIL doesn't call it magic cream, she just refers to the "ointment" but it is not ointment consistency, more of a cream.

Whatever it is, it works for the kids. They get hugs and attention with "medicine" applied to their boo-boos all of which reinforces their feelings that they are important to MIL, are loved and will get treated for their boo-boos.

[Wounded Bear]

5. What do they expect?

You trick the kid into injuring himself and he's supposed to respond to your faux boo-boo kisses?

[MindPilot]

6. More of the lies and BS from our parents...

Santa Claus...Easter Bunny...Tooth Fairy...college equals a good job...

I was LOL-ing at the use of "soft" woods. In the context of getting hit in the head, neither pine or fir can be remotely construed as soft. Fortunately none of the children in the study needed more than three stitches.

[packman]

7. Sorry, have to call BS on that study

Mommy hugs and kisses ward off all kinds of boo-boos real and imaginary.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. It's about time this boo boo woo was exposed.

And the sooner kids learn that nobody cares, or should care, about them, the sooner they'll grow up to be functioning members of society.

[SwissTony]

9. My wife used to dish out "Mummy Kisses".

Crying kids were up and running in no time.

These days, they are "Granny Kisses". They work too. A bit of concern, love, attention and placebo.

I've found that discussing Fourier Series with my kids and/or grandkids doesn't really help when they've hurt themselves. Funny about that.