how children make meaning of illness and suffering and why it matters
TRANSCRIPT
![Page 1: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters
![Page 2: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Paul Thayer
Wheelock College
![Page 3: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Session Outline
• Introduction• How children understand illness and death,
and why it matters• How children understand ethics and why it
matters• How children understand suffering and why it
matters• Closing comments
![Page 4: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
How are we sometimes limited in our understanding of coping and
spirituality?
![Page 5: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Children and Coping
• Emotional-based coping• Play-based coping• Information-based coping• Decision-based coping• Meaning-based coping
![Page 6: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Information-Based Coping
Understanding IllnessBibace and Walsh (1980)
Understanding DeathThanatos (1995)
![Page 7: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Understanding Illness and Death: Infants
• No real understanding• Encounter issues of separation, pain,
environmental stimulation, safety, caregiver transitions
![Page 8: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
What Helps: Infants
• Parental presence in induction and recovery• Security objects• Adequate pain management• Attention to lights and people in the room• Routines• Treatment rooms for procedures• Attention to lunch time and shift changes
![Page 9: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Understanding Illness and Death: Pre-Schoolers
• Phenomenism• Contagion• Death is temporary and reversible• Death mixed up with sleep
![Page 10: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
What Helps: Pre-Schoolers
• Everything for infants• Brief explanations before procedures• Choices• Correct magical thinking
![Page 11: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Understanding Illness and Death: School Age
• Contamination and internalization• Beginning to master the concepts of non-
functionality, irreversibility, and universality
![Page 12: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
What Helps: School Age
• Everything for pre-schoolers• Control• Explanations of the illness process• Ask about guilt and punishment
![Page 13: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
Understanding Illness and Death: Teens
• Physiologic processes• Psychophysiological processes• Adult understanding of death
![Page 14: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
What Helps: Teens
• Everything for school age• Peer contact• Participation in decision making
![Page 15: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
Why Information-based Coping Matters
• Misinformation or misinterpretation leads to fear
• Information needs to be matched to developmental stages and capacities
• Maslow’s Hierarchy: If issues of safety, security, pain management, and basic questions about what is happening are not addressed, it is difficult to move on to anything else
![Page 16: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Why Information-Based Coping Matters
• Kids often “know” more than they understand• Our explanations need to grow up with them• The luxury of time
![Page 17: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
Decision-Based Coping: Ethics
![Page 18: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
What is Ethics to a Kid?
• Immediate concerns• “Small” concerns• Egocentric
![Page 19: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
Why It Matters How We Understand Ethics
• Responding to tone rather than content• Failing to hear the ethical message• Shutting down conversation by being
prematurely comforting
![Page 20: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
Meaning-Based Coping: Interpretation, Significance, and Narrative
![Page 21: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
What is suffering?
• Suffering is a threat to the integrity of a person as a complex psychological and social being; suffering is experienced by persons, not just their bodies
– Cassell 1982
![Page 22: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
Meaning Making and Spirituality
• Suffering is a challenge to meaning that calls for a meaning-making response
• Suffering is an intrapersonal spiritual issue that calls for an interpersonal spiritual response
![Page 23: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
What is Suffering to a Kid?
• Loss of wholeness• Loss of a significant person• Loss of identity• Loss of friends• Loss of routines
![Page 24: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
Kids and Meaning Construction
• Meaning making by proxy• Meaning construction• Meaning reconstruction– Assimilation– Accommodation
![Page 25: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
Some Meaning Reconstruction Questions
• What have you been taught?• Do you believe it?• Does it make sense to you?• What do you believe?• What do you believe differently now that this
has happened to you?• What do you wonder about?
![Page 26: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
Concluding Remarks
• Many kids who are not in spiritual distress also need our help and presence
• We are often too invested in being cheerleaders or closure fairies
• We often miss chances to help because we focus only on emotional coping
![Page 27: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
Concluding Remarks
• Spirituality doesn’t just happen, it is co-constructed:– Feelings– Imagination– Questions– Decisions– Interpretation
![Page 28: How Children Make Meaning of Illness and Suffering and Why It Matters](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649ee85503460f94bfa473/html5/thumbnails/28.jpg)
Concluding Remarks
• Being in the Zone of Proximal Spiritual development