Resources
These booklets are amazing. They are designed to help parents / caregivers care for themselves while still caring for their child and advocating for their child at the hospital.
- A Caregiver’s Guide: Taking Care of Yourself While Your Child is in the Hospital
- After the Injury Helping Myself Cope
Helping My Child/ Teen Cope While at the Hospital. What Parents Can Do!
After the Diagnosis: Helping My Family Cope
Helping Children / Teens Readjust After Returning Home From the Hospital:
Helping Children Cope with Serious Injury:
For Parents to Help Siblings Cope When Their Brother or Sister is Ill or Injured
Distracting Children During Medical Procedures:
These resources are aimed at helping parents and providers minimize pain and distress during a child’s procedures through distraction.
Parents can learn more and learn how to use distraction techniques to help children during medical procedures in these “Distraction in Action” videos.
At this site, parents can also sign up (for free) to use the Distraction in Action Tool, a web-based tool that provides parents with specific recommendations on how to use distraction with their child.
Websites for Parents to Cope with Having a Child with an Illness or Injury
- After the Injury helps parents understand their child’s reactions to injury and learn what they can do to help their child.
- Case for Smiles provides information to help parents understand and cope with their own traumatic stress reactions resulting from their child’s illness or injury, as well as strategies and general tips to support the whole family.
- Beyond the Cure offers information and resources for survivors of childhood cancer and their families.
- Parenting a Child with Cancer: Have You Hugged Yourself Today? Listen to a teleconference presented by Anne Kazak, PhD, ABPP of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
- https://kidshealth.org/#catexperiments It offers information about child health, behavior, and development .
Here are Links Regarding Talking to Children About Death, Grief and Loss
- https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/emotional-wellness/Building-Resilience/Pages/How-Children-Understand-Death-What-You-Should-Say.aspx
(how children understand death, coping with death, how to talk to kids about death, grief and loss)
- https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/death.html
(talking to children about death, grief and loss)
- https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/someone-died.html
(grief and loss, understanding grief)
Here are Some Links for Concerned Parents Wanting Basic Information About A Child with Medical Trauma Going to School
This link provides Ten Ways to be an advocate at school for your child
This link provides information for the Individualized Educational Plan for a child
Resources for Children
This workbook is designed to help children cope with a hospitalization. Included are stories and activities to help children become familiar with hospital staff and medical procedures, understand emotional responses to trauma, and deal with traumatic stress reactions:
This handout helps kids cope with pain and injury:
This handout helps kids think about what they want to say about their illness or injury:
This handout helps kids cope with traumatic stress reactions and reminders:
This sheet helps children re-adjust to returning home from the hospital:
Resources for Siblings
This educational handout is designed to help siblings cope with their brother or sister’s hospitalization, illness, injury, and recovery .
Great Websites for Children and Teens
- Band-Aides and Blackboards is fun interactive website for kids and teens growing up with medical problems
- The Experience Journals are a collection of stories for children and teens living with physical or emotional illness
- https://kidshealth.org/ offers online information about child health, behavior, and development for kids and teens
- Starbright World® is an online social network for seriously ill teens and their teen-aged siblings.
