“These moments of complicity as a family also encourage our children to open up to us and to share an issue that might be troubling them at that moment.”

There is no better medicine than knowledge to combat the fear and uncertainty that new situations can generate in both adults and children. Even so, by showing the Virtual Reality experiences with real hospital spaces, we will have already come a long way the days before the surgery. Next I propose a series of activities that you can carry out at home to help your children to go through (and remember) a future medical experience, which for many could be stressful, as an (in many cases) enriching adventure.

If your child is used to playing with stuffed animals or dolls, this first activity that I propose will be quite easy to carry out. It is a role-playing game in which you will exchange the roles of doctor and patient. Ideally, you will propose to your child to choose which stuffed animal or doll he/she wants to use for this game (it is possible, but not certain, that he/she does not want one of his/her favorite stuffed animals to be “sick”…). From Nixi for Children we offer the Nixi’s plush toy to prevent this situation from happening, which is algo doll that is anatomically designed to facilitate the explanation of medical processes.

“We will have already come a long way if we have shown the Virtual Reality experiences, with the real hospital spaces, the days before the surgery.”

To begin with, you will decide who plays the role of mommy/daddy and who plays the role of the doctor. When your child is the parent of the stuffed animal, they will have to explain to you what is wrong with their stuffed animal (depending on the age of your child, this information will be more or less precise: for how long they have had the symptoms, if they are taking any medication or possible allergies). In this interaction, the mom or dad, while playing the role of doctor, could even ask the stuffed animal how they are doing at school or ask them about their best friends. When you start the medical examination of the plush toy, suggest to the child that the plush sits on their lap (instead of on the examination table) so that you can practice the comfort positions (for more information, see the specific capsule on this subject). Once the examination is over, you can present the medical diagnosis of the stuffed animal and explain to your child the need for surgery.

When you recreate the day of the operation, you should mainly emphasize the experience of the stuffed animal/patient: that is why we will describe in great detail the pre-surgery controls (putting the thermometer, measuring, weighing, checking blood pressure, saturation meter…), always emphasizing “the job” of the plush (“stuffed animal, your job will be to act like a statue while we measure you, weigh you, check your temperature”…). See the capsule Your job to learn about the importance of defining responsibilities.

This game is more fun the more we get involved in it, either by building a doctor’s office with a reading lamp and a computer keyboard, with which we will pretend to enter the patient’s data in his medical record, or even by recreating the entrance to the hospital and the moment of induction to anesthesia. Regarding the induction of anesthesia, ideally you will have informed yourself about how it will actually be for the child (there are two different ways: with an IV that administers the anesthesia or with an anesthesia mask).

It should be noted that when the induction of anesthesia is done via mask, there is no need to go into detail about how the line (the catheter) is put in because that is done once the child is already under anesthesia and at that point is no longer conscious). For more information on how to explain medical events, see the capsule The Five Senses Rule.

A fair simple way to explain anesthesia would be to talk about a “special great sleep“. It’s a special sleep because the child doesn’t have to try to sleep, doesn’t have to be tired, and doesn’t have to close their eyes! It is the medicine, the anesthesia, that is in charge of making the child sleep. It is a great sleep because during the anesthesia the operation is performed, so that for the child it is as if the operation were not performed because they do not know anything. Summary: the child’s job will be to receive the medicine that will make them to sleep (if the child tells us “I don’t want to sleep”, validate this emotion, and tell them that it’s okay because they won’t have to try to sleep).

The basic concept of the game would be exactly the same as Jenga but with a little twist (I advise that if you don’t know this game or have never played it, give it a try). Think of a series of questions; they can be very simple, such as: What flavor of ice cream is your favorite? Or they can be more personal, such as: Who is your best friend and why? Write also questions related to the operation: What is your doctor’s name? or What movie do you want to see the day before the operation? Introducing these concepts will make our child think about that day, so we can also take the opportunity to talk about it and open up to us.

If you run out of ideas, here are some questions you could add to the game:

• What do you think the world will be like when you grow up?
• What special skill can you teach me to do right now?
• What fictional character would you like to be your doctor?
• If you could choose your name again, what would you call yourself?
• What is your favorite space in the hospital?

You should write these questions on slips of paper and put them all in a bucket. When one of you gets a block out, he or she should take, without looking, a slip of paper and hand it to the other, who should read it aloud. Ideally, they should feel no pressure to respond to anything, so if turning it into a game doesn’t help them to open up either, it would be better to wait for another occasion. But don’t give up the game, the moment when the tower falls is the most fun!

We hope these methods will help you to cope better in the days before the operation, and don’t forget to check out the rest of the capsules to understand and learn more about how to manage your emotions in the days before going to the hospital.