Medical Coping Collection

These Coping Cards represent a collaboration between the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program at Boston Children's Hospital and Fred Rogers Productions. Each card teaches strategies to cope with a medical procedure. This Coping Card focuses on having an electrocardiograph (EKG or ECG).

These Coping Cards represent a collaboration between the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program at Boston Children's Hospital and Fred Rogers Productions. Each card teaches children and caregivers strategies to cope with a medical procedure. This Coping Card focuses on having an echocardiogram (echo).

Traumatic experiences and post-traumatic stress are common among children and families with complex heart defects. Learn how to recognize, prevent, and treat the symptoms.

Going to the hospital can be much less stressful when you and your family are prepared both logistically and emotionally. This resources guides you through the preparation process.

These strategies and resources can help caregivers to keep hospitalized children busy, interested, and engaged. When children are able to maintain routines and participate in activities, they are better able to cope with illness.

When children are very sick, they can sometimes experience delirium. Preventing and reducing delirium can improve both their emotional and physical health.

Medical play can help people of all ages to understand and process their medical experiences, and to build a reassuring sense of control. This resource will teach you to use medical play from infancy into adulthood.

Children with CHDs and their family members often experience the grief associated with ambiguous loss. When they can name and understand these emotions, they are better able to cope with them. This resource explains ambiguous loss and how to manage it.

Parents face enormous mental strain when their child has a heart defect. Managing parent mental health is critical for a family's functioning. This article guides parents through understanding and treating their own difficult thoughts and feelings.

Developmental Care is a set of practices that promote healthy child development and family functioning within a hospital setting. Using Developmental Care can protect and promote everyone's well-being in the face of serious illness. This collection of resources describes multiple aspects of Developmental Care.

Pediatric palliative care can be an invaluable resource for children and families throughout childhood. Palliative care providers collaborate with families to prioritize their values and goals, focusing on all aspects of functioning.

These books, videos, and other resources can help kids to understand mental and behavioral health, and to learn strategies to better cope with challenging thoughts and feelings.

These books, websites, and other resources can help kids to understand genetic diagnoses, and can reduce the fear and stigma that are sometimes associated with these diagnoses.

This resource helps caregivers to support their child before, during, and after ECMO treatment, and gives them suggestions for protecting their own mental health even as they care for their child.

This article explains what to expect when a child has a VAD, and helps caregivers learn coping strategies to use throughout the process.

This resource describes the process before, during, and after a heart transplant, and explains how caregivers can promote coping in themselves and their children.

This resource helps caregivers prepare children to undergo hospital procedures, so that they feel calmer and more in control.

Anticipatory grief can often create complex and challenging emotions for family members of children with heart defects, and sometimes for the children themselves. Recognizing and labeling anticipatory grief is often the first step towards coping with it effectively.

Parents often worry about how to talk with children about their diagnosis. This guide will help caregivers to have these conversations with confidence, and to help children feel pride and agency in the face of illness.

Children often struggle to manage their emotions and behaviors in a medical setting, especially if they have a history of medical trauma. This video teaches caregivers how to support children to self-regulate when they are in a doctor's office or hospital.

Medical encounters can be scary and frustrating if a child is unable to effectively communicate. This video explains why communication can be hard in the hospital or doctor's office, and teaches strategies to help children communicate with caregivers and providers.

This video from the Family Medical Coping Initiative at Boston Children's Hospital describes how to manage chronic illness in a school setting.

Children with congenital heart defects (CHDs) are likely to experience higher levels of anxiety than most children. Here is more information about children's anxiety and effective treatments.

Parents and other caregivers have a lot of options for helping their children to manage anxiety. This resources describes options.

Children with congenital heart defect (CHD) often face anxiety surrounding their health and medical treatments. This webinar describes strategies to help.

Kids with heart defects often have big feelings, and are more likely than others to struggle with issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, social problems, and/or depression. Therapy can help.

Young adults with heart defects often get help from therapists, who can help them to manage their feelings and thoughts, and to meet their goals.

This video teaches caregivers how to use comfort positions to keep children calmer and more content in a medical setting.

Emerson spent much of a year in the hospital, waiting for a heart transplant. Her father tells her story, and offers advice for coping with long hospitalizations as a family.

Children have a right to free and appropriate public education whether or not they are healthy enough to attend school in person. Learn about how to advocate for your child's education when they are physically out of school.

Raising a child with a complex illness can be complicated, and parents can often use additional support and advice. Parent guidance is a type of therapy that can promote medical coping in the whole family.

We all know it takes a village to raise a child, and a village is even more vital when a child has a congenital heart defect. This article walks caregivers through the process of identifying and building a support network.

When a child learns their sibling has a heart defect, they often feel confused and afraid. This article explains how to talk to children about a sibling's diagnosis, and how to support healthy siblings as they adjust to a new brother or sister.

These resources can help healthy siblings of children with heart defects to feel seen, validated, and understood.

Parents often ignore self-care, preferring to focus all of their attention on their child. However, self-care is important for family functioning at any stage, and is especially during pregnancy, when a parent's stress can directly affect a growing fetus. This article describes how a busy parent can integrate self-care into their daily life.

Child Life Specialists are specially trained to help children cope with medical treatment and hospital admissions. Learn how they can support your family.

This video describes how caregivers can prepare children for medical procedures so that they are better able to cope.

Keeping up with medical care can be difficult when children struggle to take medicine by mouth. This video describes how to teach children to swallow medicine easily and effectively.

Children often struggle to keep up with necessary medical treatments and restrictions at home. This video guides caregivers to support kids in adhering to medical plans.

When a child experiences chronic pain, they can have a hard time attending school and engaging with instruction. These accommodations can help.

Addie and Sam met when Sam was just a baby, and Addie was preparing for her first heart surgery. They and their families have supported each other for over a decade. Their story shows us how community connections can foster resilience in the face of childhood illness.

Young children with heart defects often have big emotions, and may struggle to understand, express, and manage them. Here are some options to get support.

Kids with heart defects often struggle to manage and understand big emotions. Intervention can help them to understand, express, and cope with their feelings.

Teens with heart defects frequently manage big and confusing thoughts and feelings. These services can help them to understand and express themselves, and to develop adaptive coping strategies.

Young adults with heart defects sometimes struggle to understand and manage their emotions, especially as they start the face the realities of their prognosis and a more independent life. Interventions can help them to cope.

Babies with heart defects often face high levels of stress, and can have trouble learning self-regulation. These interventions can help.

Children with heart defects sometimes behave in ways that can pose challenges to caregivers, especially when they are managing medical symptoms and treatments. These strategies can help caregivers to effectively manage behaviors in a way that shows love, validation, and respect.

Chronic pain can severely disrupt a child's life if it is not appropriately managed. These videos explain strategies for managing and living fully with chronic pain.

Many children are afraid of needles, and shots can be extremely challenging. These strategies can help reduce their distress, and help them move through procedures involving with needs more easily.

When providers and families can work together as a team, everyone feels safer and calmer. In this series of videos, Boston Children's Hospital cardiologist Dr. Betsy Blume talks with Katy, the mother of two boys with complex heart defects (CHDs).

Disease-specific camps can provide welcome respite and validate for children with heart defects, as well as their parents and siblings. Many camps are free, and many invite the whole family. This resource lists camps by country, region, and state.

When babies are securely attached to their primary caregivers, they are better able to self-regulate, and to feel safe exploring the world. This article teaches parents how to promote secure attachment.

Secure attachment helps children with heart defects to feel safe, and to cope with the stressors of chronic illness. This article describes how to promote secure attachment in young children.

Parents can strengthen their attachment with their child at any age. Secure attachment to a caregiver can help children with heart defects to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and to feel safe enough to embrace challenges.

These resources can help families to locate a therapist who understands their needs, and who can support their coping.

Finding your place within a community is a key ingredients of successful coping with a chronic illness. This article gives suggestions and resources.

Many pregnant parents feel high levels of stress, and stress is often particularly elevated among parents expecting a baby with a heart defect. Learn how to recognize, understand, and manage stress in pregnancy.

This guide helps parents plan to deliver their baby with a heart defect. Solid preparation can help parents to know what to expect, and to feel calmer and more in control during the experience.

Sometimes, people living with congenital heart defects (CHDs) can experience episodes of depression. Recognizing and treating depression early can lead to better outcomes. Read to learn more.

This series of videos is aimed at clinicians, and teachers them how to promote resilience in families managing chronic illness.

This presentation from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is aimed at clinicians, and describes best practices in trauma-informed care for infants with heart defects and their families.

This presentation from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) teaches best practices in trauma-informed care for toddlers with congenital heart defects (CHDs).

Parents can use these strategies to support their babies' emotional development, and to promote coping in little ones with heart defects.

Parents and other caregivers can use these strategies to help young children with heart defects to learn to recognize and cope with big emotions.

Parents and teachers can use these strategies to help kids with heart defects to learn about emotions, and to cope with the big feelings that come along with chronic illness.

Caregivers can use these strategies to support healthy emotional development in teens with heart defects, and to help them to cope with chronic illness.

Young adults with heart defects often continue to require help in developing emotional intelligence and self-regulation. These strategies can help them to learn to cope with the stress of their illness.

These books, websites, and other resources can help children with heart defects to learn about their diagnosis, and to see representations of other children like themselves.