If a child has to be hospitalized, it understandably causes tremendous stress for the family. In addition to the illness itself, parents experience a disruption of work and family routines. Parents will also feel a need to keep friends and family members updated about the child’s condition. Unfortunately, people may call, text or email while a parent is talking to the hospital staff, taking care of their child or merely trying a take a brief nap.
One way to ease the pressure of communicating with oved ones is to choose a person from each side of the family to be your spokesperson. This could be an aunt, uncle, grandparent or even a close friend. One spokesperson communicates with the mom’s side of the family, and the other takes care of the dad’s side. Friends and coworkers can be divided up the same way.
Whoever is chosen to be your spokesperson should contact everyone that needs updating and tell them NOT to contact the parents for information or to express well wishes. Instead, the spokesperson will keep in touch with the parents and circulate updates to everyone else. If the parents need help with dinners, school pickup, etc., the spokesperson can coordinate this as well. This plan can spare parents from spending hours of precious time relaying the same information to dozens of people.
NOTE: Although there are lots of books in print about children being in the hospital, most of them don’t address the psychological stress a child feels when this happens. To fill this gap, I wrote a book years ago called Harry Goes to the Hospital.
