The seizure only lasts a few minutes, and generally has no lasting effect on the child. Febrile convulsions are common and approximately three per cent of children aged six months to six years may have a convulsion when they have a high temperature. The seizure affects not only the child, but also parents and bystanders who may not have observed this phenomenon before. As a first aid provider, it is part of your responsibility to reassure the witnesses. The greatest fear parents have is that the child is not breathing, and they think that death is imminent.
Panic becomes likely.
Because the child is having a seizure, it cannot breathe, but as the convulsions subside, the child begins breathing spontaneously. Unfortunately, it does not appear this way to concerned parents. Often ambulances have arrived on scene to find a distraught parent running down the road towards them, carrying a now screaming child. As a precaution, a doctor should always assess the child to rule out seizures from any other cause.