About Golisano Children's Hospital
Our Services and Programs
Our Team
Keeping Your Child Healthy
Our Specialized Centers
Research
 Home
Education
Community Outreach
 Home
For Referring Physicians
 Home
Ways to Give
 Home

 

More Information
Golisano Children's Hospital News

 
 

 

Your Child's Hospital Visit

Helping Siblings Cope

When a child goes to the hospital, the experience can be as frightening for a brother or sister as it is for the child who is ill. Changes in family routines, separation from parents and concern about their sick sibling can shake their sense of security.

Many of the same techniques you use to prepare your ill child for hospitalization can also be used to help your other children.

  • Give your children as much honest information about their sibling’s health as they can understand.
  • Provide opportunities for them to ask questions and express feelings.
  • Preparing and helping in the planning can be as important for a healthy child as for the hospitalized child. Allow the sibling to:
    • Take the hospital tour with the sick child, if possible;
    • Act out experiences with people, dolls, or puppets.

  • Set aside some private time each day just for them.
  • Make it a point to recognize important events in their lives.
  • When you have to be away from home with the hospitalized child:
    • Arrange to have someone both you and they trust stay with them;
    • Check in by phone as often as you can. Call at bedtime to read a bedtime story;
    • Send letters or tapes.
  • Nurture ongoing involvement between siblings and the hospitalized child throughout the hospital experience.
    • Have siblings draw pictures or make cards to send to the hospital;
    • Set up times for siblings to call the child in the hospital;
    • When possible, give siblings the choice of visiting a brother or sister in the hospital. If they choose to visit, be sure to prepare them for what they will see, hear and feel.
  • Inform school guidance counselors about what’s happening.

  • Allow siblings to keep a balance between increased responsibility at home and maintaining their normal activities.