Coping With Feelings: Chronically Ill Children and Their Families

Abstract

Coping with a child's chronic illness presents many challenges for parents. To cope effectively, there are a number of adaptive tasks that all parents must complete, regardless of what type of chronic illness their child has (Hymovich, 1976, 1979; Mailick, 1979; Moos & Tsu, 1977). According to a number of authors, one of the most important of these tasks is being able to communicate with others in the family about the illness, including explaining the illness to the child and the siblings and encouraging the expression of feelings about the illness (Burton, 1975; Kaplan, Smith, Grobstein & Fischman, 1973; Kliman, 1978; McCollum, 1975; Steinhauser, 1972). Yet, little research has been done in this area. If nurses are to be effective in their role of helping families with chronically ill children to cope, they must have an understanding of the adaptive tasks that parents face and of the coping strategies they employ in completing these tasks. Brailey (1984) emphasizes that, in order to study the effectiveness of coping, we must be able to obtain an accurate picture of how people actually do cope with the stressful events of their lives.