Ideas For Helping Parents With Ill Children: How To Improve
Mental Development Of Children With Chro
Disclaimer: None of the content of this article should be
considered medical or psychological advice. You should consult
with your health care professional for specific advice relating
to your medical and psychological questions or conditions.
An important issue for psychologists, pediatricians, and other
specialists working with children is physical and mental
development of children and adolescents. There are many age
periodizations in child's development and going through every
period, child learns and gets new abilities. However, children
with chronic illnesses like diabetes, sickle cell anemia, severe
asthma, cancer and others cannot go through regular physical and
mental development. Due to special treatment they cannot go to
ordinary school like healthy children, sometimes they have to
stay in hospitals for a long period of time. How to help
children with illnesses develop mentally and not drop behind
children of the same age?
1. Create special home or hospital-educational plan and organize
short mathematics, logics and reading lessons every day or week.
Together with your child you can make this time very interesting
and useful. New information, which you can find for your child,
will help him or her to feel completeness of life and
self-efficiency.
2. Create homework assignments for your child. Begin with easy
arithmetical (or any other subject) tasks. Doing it successfully
will help your child to raise self-confidence and interest to
new knowledge.
3. Even small tasks which demand accuracy (for example,
measuring table in centimeters or inches) can be very
interesting if you explain that every item around us should be
planned and measured very accurately first, before constructing.
Manual tasks demanding attention and accuracy are very useful,
because they increase ability to concentrate and regulate
attention.
4. Be patient and teach your child to be patient. This will help
your child to be optimistic during treatment process and have
positive attitude to the environment - some of the major
components of psychological and physical health.
5. Contributing to your child's mental development will help
your child feel all your love. Receiving interesting
information, positive attitude and cheerful mood create a
special condition to improve health and stop illness progress.
Help your child be interested in knowing more and more about
this world, prompt him or her to be healthy and you will see
positive changes in your child's life.