Scrape First Aid:

Sure, you want to clean it, but of course a wound is at its most painful when fresh.  There really isn’t a huge rush if your child is freaking out; even open wounds like lacerations can be safely cleaned and closed in kids 12-24 hours after they occur.  One option is to buy a topical lidocaine formulation, apply it, wait, THEN clean and bandage. LMX (Ferndale labs) is over the counter at many pharmacies.  It has a formulation of lidocaine that absorbs quickly, and after gooping it on and watching an episode of SpongeBob the wound is pretty painless to clean.

If you can’t or don’t want to wait, again, pressing Buzzy upstream of the injury confuses the nerves and blocks some of the pain. In the emergency department, research found placing a wound under running tap water for 2 minutes is just as good as irrigating with sterile saline (assuming you have safe city water). With enough water, you don’t need stinging soap.  In the hospital, betadine and peroxide are only used to prep skin for surgery: we DON’T want it inside wounds!  Get the water room temperature and run it as strongly as your child will tolerate. The solution to pollution is dilution!

While cleaning, press Buzzy "between the brain and the pain", or closer to the child's head than the injury.  When the actual moment of cleaning is at hand, have distraction ready, and consider a nice cold swig of a sweet treat to drink.

If you don’t have a Buzzy or vibrating toy, gently randomly scratch the skin above the injury to distract the nerves when the water first hits the wound. Even better, do that while pressing a frozen pop upstream an inch or so to further confuse the pain nerves.  After rinsing, apply antibiotic ointment and leave open or use a non-stick dressing.  We prefer those that only have two antibiotics (e.g. Bacitracin) rather than those that contain three (e.g. Neosporin) because some children react to the third ingredient, but really, any should be fine.