Have you benefited from the help of a child life specialist?

[ajfuller]

Hi all,
I'm a freelance journalist working on a story about the role of child life specialists in preparing children for surgery and helping them adjust and cope at the hospital. If your child has benefited from the help of a child life specialist and you would like to talk about it, please get in touch: amy.fuller@ryerson.ca.
Thanks!
-Amy

[kitkatz]

I sure wish there had been child life specialists in my childhood with all of the stuff I went through in hospitals.

[kristina]

Kitkatz said it already very clearly and I could not agree more! I also wish there had been a child-life-specialist in my childhood when I was in hospital. Most of the time my bed was put in a room with grown-up females when I happened to be the only child in the small country hospital. At the same time, being an adult now, I wonder: would it not put too much pressure on a healthy child to work as a child-life-specialist and watch another child suffering so badly? How could they cope emotionally?

[kitkatz]

Child-life specialists are adults who are trained work with children who are going into the hospitals. They are not children themselves.

[lola]

We had one talk to Dani when we first found out about her Alports and then to also explain things to our 2 other kids so they wouldn't be scared that she would get sick like there Dad. I think there great, Dani loved having them come in B-4 labs to take blood from the teddy bear.