My Child Was Injured at a Daycare Center. What Does ‘Emotional Damages’ Mean When Taking Legal Action?

What Are Emotional Damages in a Daycare Injury Case? Our Experienced Lawyers Explain. 

Damages are how justice is awarded in the legal process. In a daycare injury case, a daycare center that is found responsible for causing a child’s injury pays damages to the injured child’s family. Both economic and non-economic damages can be awarded.

Economic damages include itemized bills, therapy session costs, and medical expenses. Any fee that a family paid because of the child’s daycare injury. Emotional damages are considered non-economic damages. While these damages do not have a corresponding bill, they are a consequence of a child’s injury or traumatic incident at a daycare center.

 For example, emotional damages in a daycare injury case can include:

• Developmental or milestone regressions: Some children who experience a severe injury or distressing treatment by a caregiver or a severe injury at a local daycare center may cope by regressing, or going back, in their developmental milestones. This can look like a child walking and talking clearly, suddenly reverting to crawling and using baby talk. Or a child who is potty trained, wetting the bed again, or asking to wear diapers.
• Lifelong physical changes, like disfigurement: Often, the impact an injury has on a child lasts longer than a hospital visit. If a child loses a limb or has a permanent, obvious scar from a daycare injury, the child could spend the rest of their life adapting to the change in their appearance. Our daycare and child injury lawyers often see this with severe finger injuries and bottle warmer burns, where little ones may suffer from extreme embarrassment or have long-term self-esteem issues following a daycare injury.
• Quality of life loss: Any change from what is typical could be considered emotional damage. If, because a lack of supervision at a daycare center, a child breaks their wrist during the summer and is unable to swim with their friends like they usually do, that is considered a disruption to their typical life experience. Another example is a child who used to be outgoing and social with his or her peers becoming shy or quiet after experiencing a traumatic event at a daycare center.
• Mental anguish: A child’s extreme emotional reactions to a daycare injury or incident is considered mental anguish. Often, this manifests as a child developing anxiety and suffering from nightmares or night terrors.
• Separation anxiety: Following a traumatic incident or injury at a daycare center, especially with there are instances of abuse or unapproved punishment tactics at the hands of a caregiver, little ones may get extremely distressed when they’re not close to their parent. This manifests in a child screaming and crying whenever a parent is not within their eyesight. A child may even develop a fear of the daycare center itself, whether reported by the child or seen when the child is within range of their daycare center.

What Daycare Injuries or Incidents Cause Emotional Damages?

When it comes to safety at a daycare center, parents often worry about their child’s physical health. However, our experienced daycare and child injury lawyers have helped families across Texas get justice following incidents at local centers that caused their child emotional damages.

Daycare injuries and incidents that cause emotional damages include:

• Abuse at the hands of a caregiver. While we don’t want to think about this happening, our legal team has helped many families whose children have been physically harmed by caregivers at a local daycare center.
• Sexual abuse–either by a caregiver or another child at a daycare center–may not have obvious signs at first. However, a child’s mental and emotional well-being can be severely impacted. The nonprofit RAINN, which is dedicated to helping survivors of sexual abuse, reported an increase in a child’s suicidal and depressive thoughts after being victimized.
• Inappropriate discipline methods such as name-calling, spanking, hitting, or other physical actions and prolonged timeouts are illegal per Texas daycare laws. These methods have been barred from daycare centers because they have been shown to instill trauma and negatively affect a child’s development, according to researchers on the subject.
• Neglect: When daycare centers do not comply with state-mandated child-to-caregiver ratios, overwhelmed caregivers are incapable of keeping visual and auditory tabs on every child at all times. Thus, incidents of wandering, children being left in daycare vans, and children forgotten in timeout or isolated in classrooms are more likely to occur with negative emotional consequences.

Now That I Know About Emotional Damages After My Child’s Daycare Incident, What Should I Do?

The first thing you should always do after an incident at a local daycare center is gather as much documentation as possible. This involves getting a copy of the incident report from your child’s daycare center and saving all written communications from the daycare center discussing the incident, such as emails, text messages, and letters. 

Next, making sure your child is not only safe but has been properly treated by a medical professional is important. An exam and medical records will also provide a professional’s opinion and documentation that your child’s injury could have occurred at the daycare center.

We also encourage parents to download our free guide that outlines steps to take following a daycare injury, including contacting our experienced daycare and child injury lawyers. We know how tough it can be to see your little one hurt, and our mission is to help your family not only seek the compensation you deserve but ensure that your child’s mental and emotional well-being is addressed to help them move forward in a healthy way.

Did Your Child Suffer Emotionally After a Daycare Injury? Contact The Button Law Firm.

If your child was emotionally harmed because of negligent practices at a daycare or childcare center anywhere in Texas, our team of experienced and compassionate daycare and child injury lawyers at The Button Law Firm can help. We’re dedicated to advocating for you and your family. We are ready to listen and fight for your family to get justice and move forward. Our lawyers at The Button Law Firm are recognized on the prestigious Texas Super Lawyers list, and we can help guide you after a traumatizing incident involving your child. We work on contingency, meaning we don’t charge you or collect any upfront fees to get started on your case. Get a free case evaluation by calling us at 214-699-4409, emailing us at [email protected], or filling out a contact form.