Coping With Chronic Illness…Techniques For Children That Support, Empower, And Promote Creativity
Children facing a chronic illness endure tests, procedures, exams, as well as interminable hours either in the hospital or a clinic. Providing them strategies that are simple to use, engaging, and most importantly fun to do supports children’s growth and development while also handing them control in an environment that offers them little or none. Teaching children with a chronic illness guided imagery or relaxation techniques offers them techniques to manage pain, anxiety, isolation, and boredom while using their greatest strength; their imagination.
Preschoolers enjoy active games that move their bodies. Teaching them progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) by engaging them in a game of Can You Do What I Do? encourages them to repeat movements that a leader calls out. Asking young children to “wiggle like a worm” or “stand still like a tree”, helps them to understand better how to tense and release their muscles. Using this technique when children are having their blood drawn, intramuscular injections, or feeling anxious about any upcoming procedure provide preschool age children with a tool for coping, building self-esteem and promoting mastery and control.
{School Age|Grade School|Elementary School children can understand meditation techniques by creating an Imagination Scrapbook. Children think of images of a favorite place either real or imagined, by drawing in as much detail as possible providing the school age child an outlet during long hospitalizations or isolation due to treatment. Drawing on children’s creativity offers them an outlet for expression as well as tool to empower them as they cope with a chronic illness.
Adolescents often harbor feelings inside waiting for them to build up until they explode. Coping with a chronic illness only exacerbates this problem. Teaching body scanning is a way for teenagers to learn to search their own bodies for tension, emotions, and anxiety as well as where they hold it and how to release it. Getting teens to participate in their own care can be a challenge offering them a way to express fears, confusion, and stress may lead to better compliance, ownership and participation in their care.
Different age groups coping with chronic illness need age appropriate strategies that are engaging, interactive, and fun to learn and do. Offering children activities that move, create, and play with the fundamentals of guided imagery teach children of a variety of ages and skills to take control of their own illness, while building self-esteem, promoting creativity, and empowering themselves to be active participants in their care.
About the Author
Genevieve M. Lowry M.Ed, CCLS has been helping children and families for twenty years. As a certified child life specialist at The Children’s Hospital of NY, she worked on a general medical floor providing therapeutic activities for children facing chronic or life threatening illness. Through play and preparation she encouraged self-esteem, mastery and control over their illness, as well as promoted choice in an environment that offers little or none. She also helped children and families cope with the rigors of a cancer diagnosis in an outpatient oncology clinic.
http://guidedimageryforchildren.com
Yearbook Journalism at Palm Harbor University High School
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