The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders notes that three out of four children will experience an ear infection by age three, so there's high risk of your toddler complaining of the aching pain that often accompanies an ear infection. Since your toddler may not be capable of verbally describing his symptoms, you'll need to watch for the telltale signs that your toddler has a sore ear and requires medical attention.
Pain and Fussiness
Your toddler may pull or rub his ears and be generally more fussy than normal. Offering children's ibuprofen or acetaminophen can help manage pain but only for four to six hours at a time. When the pain continually plagues your child, it's time to contact your pediatrician for an appointment where an earache can be diagnosed as an ear infection and treated accordingly.
Change in Sleep Patterns
An earache often disrupts sleep patterns since pressure in the ear increases when your toddler is lying down. Your toddler may completely refuse to lie flat or wake more frequently throughout the night. This is because fluid can pool in the eardrums when lying down, which results in pressure and pain in the ear. While toddlers can be fickle at nighttime even when healthy, waking, crying and complaining of pain can be signs of an earache.
Cold Symptoms
Bacteria trapped in the air passages during a cold can result in infection in the ears. When your child has an earache, he also may experience lingering cold-like symptoms, such as clear or yellowish discharge in the nose, stuffiness and even a cough. All of these symptoms combine and result in an overly fussy and tired toddler.
Discharge and Smell
Rarely, the cause of pain in the ear is a hole in the eardrum. The ruptured eardrum then leaks infected pus, which can appear as yellow or green drainage on the outside of the ear. Often the leakage is accompanied by an unpleasant odor, a sign that the ear is infected. While a ruptured eardrum sounds serious, it's the product of the infection and will heal along with infection when your toddler is treated via antibiotics from your pediatrician.
