Being the parent of a chronically sick child is a full-time position, and one that comes with far more hardships than benefits. As a guardian of a young soul struggling to thrive, you have likely spent more than your fair share of time in a medical clinic.
The stringent schedule of appointments and treatments at such facilities can be hard on a young one, but there are some things you can do to make the situation a little easier and even possibly enjoyable. Positive associations, familiarity, technological devices, a full support team, and a good schedule are all things that will help to make a medical clinic feel less intimidating for a chronically sick child.
Positive Associations
Children who go to a medical clinic on a regular basis can either learn to love or hate these visits. The difference will lie in you and how you craft these visits. Try to make sure that what your child remembers from these scary and sometimes painful appointments is not the medications or shots, but rather the positive traditions you create. Some ideas for doing so are listed as follows:
Creating these positive associations will do a lot to remove the dread your chronically ill child feels about their medical visits.
Familiarity with Staff
It is frustrating to be a child. The rules are constantly changing without much explanation. At one point they are told to never talk to strangers, and in the very next breath they are asked to strip down to their skivvies and be poked and prodded by strangers.
If you want to make your child feel more comfortable at medical visits, then you need to work on forging a good relationship between the staff members and your child. When your child feels like these appointments are visits with friends rather than obscure acquaintances, things will go a lot better.
Technological Devices
There are a lot of studies out there vilifying the use of technological devices for young children. As the parent of a chronically ill child, ignore all of those, and do what you can to make these visits easier for them to handle. Having a tablet with some books or games can offer a very welcome and needed distraction from sickness and pain that sadly plagues your child's young life.
Full Support Team
It is hard enough for your child to feel so sick much of the time. Don't make it worse by allowing your child to feel alone or isolated in these struggles. Having a good support team will make visits to the medical clinic much easier. Try to have more than one person come along to these visits so that your child can feel loved and supported through the entire healing process.
Good Schedule
All children thrive on structure, and this is more true for chronically ill children. Your child is in a constant whirl of sickness and pain that cannot be predicted or counted upon. Anything you can do to create a good schedule will help to ease the burdens of the illness. Work with your chosen medical clinic, such as Summit View Clinic, to set up regular appointments at the same time and with the same people so that this structure can help your child heal in body and mind.
Share15 January 2015
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