Children do not lose consciousness as easily as adults. Because they didn’t get “knocked out” as often as adults, it was once thought that children were not as easily brain injured as adults. Modern medical research now recognizes that younger children, particularly children under the age of 5, are particularly vulnerable to brain injury and can experience significant long term challenges as a result of T.B.I.

Another myth about children and brain injury is that children are more resilient than adults and that they recover or “bounce back” faster after a traumatic brain injury.

However, Dr. William Singer, a specialist in paediatric brain injury, has been quoted as saying that:

“While children are resilient to many things, T.B.I. is not one of them. Children just don’t bounce back after a Traumatic Brain Injury”

I.Q. scores have sometimes been used to measure the effects of brain injury in children. Unfortunately I.Q. tests are not a reliable indicator of the effects of brain injury. Brain injury does not affect a victims I.Q.

Brain injury affects the victim’s ability to organize and retain information. I.Q. tests are not a reliable of a child’s learning ability after brain injury because most intelligence tests measure prior learning. But mild brain injury does not affect prior learning.