How to Prepare Your Child for a Hospital Stay
The hospital can be a scary place for kids. Here’s what to do to make their time there easier.
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To prepare your child for a hospital stay, be honest and use age-appropriate language to explain what will happen, allowing them to ask questions and express fears
Key Takeaways
- Let your child know it’s OK to be frightened, angry or sad about an impending hospital stay. Validating their feelings can help them feel supported during this difficult time.
- Be clear, concise and honest about what will happen in the hospital, including any procedures or treatments they’ll have. Don’t sugar-coat the pain they might experience, but help them learn strategies to cope.
- Ask your child what items from home they’d like to bring, such as a favorite toy or stuffed animal, pajamas, activities or other comfort objects. These can make the hospital seem more familiar and “normal” to your child.
- Partner with the hospital’s child life specialist, along with your child’s medical team, to discuss how you and your child are feeling about their hospital experience. Together you can create a coping plan for any procedures that might be stressful or painful.
When my son was a year and a half, he got a cold and began having difficulty breathing. After taking him to the emergency room, my husband and I learned he would need to spend an overnight, perhaps a few days, in the hospital to receive breathing treatments.
We weren’t prepared for our child’s hospital stay, didn’t know what to expect and weren’t sure how to explain it to him at his young age.
Seeing our child uncomfortable during treatments and getting poked with needles was difficult.
Even worse, he got scared every time a nurse or doctor came into the room, which continued during doctor’s appointments after he’d been discharged.
Luckily, his fear of doctors passed. Still, how could we have been more prepared to help him (and ourselves) cope during the hospital experience?
"Think of preparing for your child’s hospital stay like getting ready for the first day of school," says Katie Taylor, certified child life specialist and host of the "Child Life on Call" podcast. " You can read children’s books about the hospital, look at pictures online and talk together about what to expect. Help your child understand what they’ll see, who they might meet and what comforting items they can bring with them. Most importantly, reassure your child that you’ll be there together."
Using age-appropriate strategies and honest communication, you can help your child better understand what their hospital stay will be like.
This can help them not only have a more positive hospital stay, but also affect their beliefs about future medical experiences and aid in recovery and healing.
Meetings with child life specialists can help you during the process. We asked a few of them for their advice on preparing your child for a hospital stay.
