Children In Hospital: Granting Their Wishes

Children in hospital witness a drastic, and often sudden, change in their life.  To undergo treatment and therapy, they must abandon their (much needed) routine of going to school, playing with their friends, doing their extracurricular activities, etc. Basically, they almost seem to stop being children.

Can anything be done to restore their joy?  In fact, one of the most used proposals to succeed in this aim are programs focused on fulfilling the wishes of these little ones. But are they limited to this or do they have other benefits as well?

Fulfilling the wishes of children in the hospital also helps the family

The truth is that children in hospital are not the only ones to suffer, their families also live this situation very badly and enter a dynamic governed by anxiety, sadness and worries. Nevertheless, it  is very important that parents are able to offer emotional support to their children.

These programs based on fulfilling children’s wishes can help family members. First, they facilitate communication between parents and their child when the child tells them what the wish they want to fulfill is .  Planning it together invites them to talk about the baby’s illness and life. In this way, it will be possible to strengthen family ties.

It will also serve as a tool for them to communicate with each other by revealing what they think and how they feel about the situation in which they find themselves. In this way, a process of acceptance of the disease is favored; But it doesn’t stop there:  these programs also offer a breath of fresh air from all the consequences of hospitalization .  In other words, they help them feel the pleasure of spending time together again.

Fulfilling wishes: an extra tool for children in hospital to recover their joy

When an adult is hospitalized, he feels that his life has been turned upside down. The same happens to the little ones. They are in a phase of their life in which it is essential that they feel loved and integrated into the environment around them ,  and hospitalization interrupts this.

For this reason, it is common for hospitalized children to feel different from others due to the disease. By spending a lot of time in a hospital setting, they may stop feeling like children, as they are forced to abandon the typical activities of this stage of development.

On this line, it is essential that the little ones are hopeful .  And this is where programs based on fulfilling the wishes of the pediatric hospital population come into play. Desire instills hope in the little ones that what they desire can come true. Give them joy and the will to live, essential for them to continue to fight.

Children in the hospital and increased positive emotions

The emotional reality of children in hospital is often flooded with negative emotions.  Anxiety, anger or sadness can be very present in the daily life of children who, on many occasions, do not know how to manage them.

It is normal for self-esteem and insecurity problems to also arise, as the little ones are aware that this process they are forced to go through makes them different from others, that they can no longer continue with their daily routine and that they cannot play with theirs. friends like before.

For all these reasons, it is  important to take into account the positive emotions that are generated by fulfilling wishes and that balance the emotional balance of these children.  Fulfilling their wishes improves their emotional well-being and they feel like they are little again. And most importantly, it reduces their suffering and helps them cope with the disease with more energy and optimism.