Pediatric guide · 9 min read
Infant Concussion Signs and Symptoms, Toddlers to Teens
It's late, your child hit their head, and they can't tell you what's wrong. Every parent who has stood in a hallway at 11pm trying to decide whether this is an emergency knows the feeling. You are not overreacting by taking it seriously.
Infant concussion signs and symptoms are behavioral. A baby can't report a headache, and a toddler can't tell the difference between dizzy and tired. So what you're actually looking for is change — and you're the only person in the room who knows what normal looks like for this child.
The danger signs come first, because those can't wait. Everything else follows.
How do you spot a concussion in a child who can't tell you what's wrong?
You watch for a change from that child's own baseline, not for a symptom they can name. Every concussion sign the CDC lists for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers is a comparison — irritability and crying more than usual, refusing to nurse or eat, changes in sleeping patterns.
Read that list again and notice what it has in common. Not one item is a fixed threshold. There is no number of minutes of crying that means concussion. The signal is the gap between how your child usually is and how they are tonight, and you're the instrument that measures it.
That's also why it helps to write things down. Note the time of the injury, what they were doing, whether they were sleepy or unsettled an hour later, how they fed. If you end up in front of a clinician tomorrow, that timeline is the most useful thing you can bring.
One more thing about timing. Some concussion symptoms appear straight away, but the CDC is explicit that others may not appear for hours or days after the injury. A child who seems completely fine at bedtime can look different in the morning, which is covered in more detail in our guide to how long symptoms take to start.
When should you take a child to the emergency room after a head injury?
Go to an emergency department, or call 911, if your child shows any danger sign — these mean the brain may be dangerously injured, and they are not a wait-and-see situation. In children specifically, the CDC adds two signs to the adult list: a child who will not stop crying and is inconsolable, and a child who will not nurse or eat.
The danger signs the CDC publishes for any age include:
- A headache that gets worse and does not go away
- Losing consciousness, looking very drowsy, or not being able to be woken up
And in children, in addition to those:
- Crying that will not stop, with a child who cannot be consoled
- Refusing to nurse or eat
Those are the examples we could confirm word-for-word on the CDC page, and the full published list is longer than what's above — it's worth reading it in full on the CDC's danger signs page while you're deciding.
Two things are worth saying plainly. Nothing on this page is a reason to delay care. If your gut says something is wrong with your child, that is a good enough reason to be seen tonight, and no emergency clinician will think you wasted their time.
What are the signs of a concussion in infants and toddlers?
The CDC's HEADS UP list of concussion signs in infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers is short: irritability and crying more than usual, refusing to nurse or eat, and changes in sleeping patterns. Those are behavioral observations a parent makes over hours, not a test you can run in a single moment.
What that looks like in practice varies with age. In a baby, "changes in sleeping patterns" might be sleeping far more than usual, or being unable to settle at all. In a toddler, the same underlying problem might show up as a child who wants to be held constantly and has no interest in the toy they wanted this morning. The mechanism is the same. The behavior is age-appropriate.
You'll find much longer lists of infant concussion symptoms online, and some of the items on them are repeated so widely that they read as established fact. We've kept this section to what the CDC actually publishes. Where we couldn't confirm a sign on a CDC or AAP page, we left it out rather than pass it on, because a parent making a decision at midnight deserves to know which claims have a source behind them.
None of this replaces an examination. It tells you what to watch. It doesn't tell you what's happening inside your child's head, and it isn't a way to rule a concussion out at home.
Does my child need a CT scan?
Probably not, and that's a deliberate clinical position rather than a cost-saving one. Head CT should not be routinely performed to assess patients with mild traumatic brain injury, according to the American Family Physician summary of the CDC's pediatric mild TBI guideline.
This surprises parents, because a scan feels like the definitive answer. It isn't the answer to the question most parents are actually asking. Whether your child needs imaging is a judgement made by the clinician who examines them, based on how the injury happened and what they find — not something to be decided in advance, and not something to push for or refuse on principle.
What it does mean is that leaving an emergency department without a scan is not the same as being dismissed. A child can have a concussion, be assessed carefully, and appropriately have no imaging at all.
What should you watch for in the days after?
Watch for the same behavioral changes, and watch for anything getting worse rather than better. Because some symptoms can surface a day or two after the injury, the days after a head injury matter as much as the first evening.
A useful frame: you're not looking for the injury to be dramatic, you're looking for the direction of travel. A child who is a bit irritable on day one and less irritable on day three is going the right way. A child whose headache is worse on day three than it was on day one is not, and that is one of the CDC's danger signs, not a normal part of recovery.
Rest, in the modern sense, means relative rest. The 2022 Amsterdam consensus statement found that people can return to light-intensity physical activity during the initial 24 to 48 hours after a concussion. The old advice — a dark room until every symptom is gone — is gone. That does not mean sport, and it does not mean pushing through.
How long does a concussion take to get better in a child?
Most children recover, and children are given a longer window than adults before symptoms are called persisting — beyond four weeks in children, compared with two weeks in adults. Up to 30% of children and adolescents have symptoms lasting four weeks or longer.
Read that second number carefully, because it cuts both ways. Nearly a third is a lot of children — enough that a slow recovery is common rather than a sign something has gone badly wrong. It's also not most children.
We can't tell you how long your child specifically will take, and you should be wary of anyone who does. What the evidence supports is that gentle activity helps. In a 2019 randomized trial published in JAMA Pediatrics, participants who started aerobic exercise below their symptom threshold recovered in a median of 13 days, compared with 17 days for those doing stretching. That threshold is set by a clinician, not guessed at home.
When can my child go back to school?
Sooner than most parents expect. The CDC states that most children can return to school within 1 to 2 days of a concussion.
Going back doesn't mean going back to everything at once. The return-to-learn approach in the Amsterdam consensus moves through four stages: relative rest, then a gradual reintroduction of school work, then part-time school, then full-time school. A shortened day, a postponed test, fewer screens and permission to leave a noisy cafeteria are the practical version of that.
Keeping a child at home indefinitely is not the cautious option it looks like. School is where a lot of children's symptoms actually show themselves — reading, screens, noise and social load are demanding — and that information is useful to the clinician managing the recovery.
When can my child play sports again?
Only when a healthcare provider says so. The CDC is unambiguous: an athlete should only return to sports practices with the approval and under the supervision of their healthcare provider.
School comes before sport, and both are ladders rather than switches. The Amsterdam consensus sets out a six-step graduated return to sport alongside the four-step return to learn, and the two run side by side:
| Step | Return to learn | Return to sport |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Relative rest | Symptom-limited activity |
| 2 | Gradual reintroduction of school work | Light aerobic exercise (2A), then moderate aerobic exercise (2B) |
| 3 | Part-time school | Individual sport-specific exercise |
| 4 | Full-time school | Non-contact training drills |
| 5 | — | Full-contact practice |
| 6 | — | Return to sport |
The steps are set out in the 6th International Conference consensus statement. Our full walkthrough of the graduated return-to-play protocol covers what each stage involves and who signs off on it.
If a coach, a tournament schedule or your child is pushing for an early return, the provider approval requirement is the answer, and it isn't yours to overrule.
What if your child still has symptoms after four weeks?
Four weeks is the point at which symptoms in a child are formally called persisting, and it is a reasonable moment to ask for a referral. Treatment at that stage is interdisciplinary and tailored to the symptom profile — vestibular, vision-oculomotor, behavioral health and cognitive rehabilitation — rather than one protocol applied to everyone.
That matters for who you call. A child whose main problem is dizziness and balance needs a different assessment from a child whose main problem is reading and screens, and a general reassurance appointment often won't resolve either. Our guide to persisting post-concussive symptoms covers what this looks like when recovery stalls.
Who should you take your child to see?
Start with the clinician who knows your child, and ask specifically for a concussion program that treats children. Across the 3,205 verified listings in our directory, 602 are tagged Pediatric/Youth, and 287 are children's hospitals.
Coverage is good but not complete, and we'd rather be straight about the gap than let you find it at the wrong moment. Those 602 pediatric-tagged listings cover 49 states. There are none tagged pediatric in Vermont or Wyoming — both states have listed concussion clinicians, but none that our verification flagged as specifically pediatric, so families there may be looking at a general concussion program or a drive across a state line.
If you're not sure what kind of clinician your child needs, our two-minute specialist quiz asks about the symptoms that are actually causing trouble and matches them to a type of provider. From there you can search verified listings by state and city.
Tonight, the job is smaller than it feels. Watch for the danger signs, get seen if anything on that list appears or if your instinct says something is wrong, and write down what you notice. The rest of it — school, sport, specialists — is a conversation for the next few days, and it's one you'll be having with a clinician who has your notes in front of them.
Find a concussion specialist near you
Search 3,205 verified concussion clinics and specialists across all 50 states — filter by services like vestibular therapy, vision therapy, and neuropsychology.
Browse the largest state directories: California (148) · South Carolina (136) · Pennsylvania (125).
Not sure which kind of specialist your symptoms point to? Take the 2-minute specialist quiz →
Frequently asked questions
My baby hit their head — what symptoms should I watch for?
The CDC's HEADS UP list of concussion signs in infants and toddlers is short and behavioral: irritability and crying more than usual, refusing to nurse or eat, and changes in sleeping patterns. All three are comparisons to how your baby normally is, which is why you're the person best placed to notice them. A baby who will not stop crying and is inconsolable, or who will not nurse or eat, is a CDC danger sign and needs emergency assessment.
Should I let my child sleep after they hit their head?
Sleep itself is not on the CDC's danger-sign list; being very drowsy or unable to be woken up is. If you cannot rouse your child, treat that as an emergency and go to an emergency department. Changes in sleeping patterns are also one of the CDC's listed concussion signs in young children, so tell the clinician what you've noticed.
Do concussion symptoms in children always show up right away?
No. The CDC states that some symptoms may appear right away while others may not appear for hours or days after the injury. That's why a child who seems fine at bedtime still needs watching over the following days, and why a normal first evening does not rule a concussion out.
Is a concussion more serious in a child than in an adult?
Children are given a longer window before symptoms are called persisting — beyond four weeks in children, compared with beyond two weeks in adults. Up to 30% of children and adolescents have symptoms lasting four weeks or longer, so a slower recovery is common rather than automatically a sign that something has gone wrong. Any danger sign at any age is an emergency regardless of how long it's been.
Are there pediatric concussion specialists in every state?
Not quite. Across the 3,205 verified listings in our directory, 602 are tagged Pediatric/Youth and 287 are children's hospitals, covering 49 states — there are none tagged pediatric in Vermont or Wyoming. Both states have listed concussion clinicians, so families there may be looking at a general concussion program or travelling across a state line.
What should I ask my child's school for after a concussion?
Most children can return to school within 1 to 2 days of a concussion, so the request is usually about adjustments rather than absence. The four-step return-to-learn approach moves from relative rest to a gradual reintroduction of school work, then part-time school, then full-time school. In practice that means a shortened day, postponed tests, less screen work and permission to leave noisy environments.
Educational content only — not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Reviewed by Jon MacKay, PharmD, BCACP against current clinical guidance; last updated August 2026.