Broken Nose

Bonks to the nose happen all the time in kids. Often when it gets bonked, kids have to sneeze a whole bunch +/- have a small nosebleed. That is pretty much it. It is super tough to break your nose when you are prepuberty as most of the larger nasal bones that adults and teens break don’t ossify (turn into bone from cartilage) until puberty. It also takes a lot of force to break a nose, and younger kids don’t usually participate in sports or activities that result in something with a whole lotta force behind it heading straight for their noses. That doesn’t mean getting bonked in the nose when you are little doesn’t hurt or can’t have rare complications. 

After your kiddo is bonked in the nose and you stop any nosebleeds, you want to make sure they can breathe easily through each nostril. Have them close their mouth, or suck on a lollipop, and close one nostril at a time and make sure air goes up and down easily through the other nostril. Repeat with the other side. Next, you want to look up at the nostrils and make sure you don’t see a red/pink sphere on one side trying to make its way down the nostril. This could be a sign of a nasal septal injury that would need to be seen urgently by an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doc to see if there is any blood building up in the nasal septum that needs to be drained. (Septal and septum refer to the wall of cartilage that separates the two sides of the nose.)

Now we still expect there to be a lot of bruising around the nose or under the eyes with a good bonk on the nose in kids, but without a lot of actual bones in the nose to break when you are little, it is super tough to actually cause a fracture.