Our child life therapists can provide families with different ways to approach children but the children themselves can provide insights to each other, which we find quite helpful in smoothing things over. It has been my observation that many times the children are doing better with the chemo from a psychological standpoint than the parents, and this points out to us that we need to help parents in maintaining good emotional control, which can help the children as well. My son has Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. The other kids pick on him because he is not athletic. He wants to feel like he is a part of recess too.
Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is probably one of the more misunderstood diseases for young children.
The joint pain, the frequent absences, the very nature of the inflammatory process promotes tremendous amount of social isolation for the child. One thing we have just developed is a computerized, self-administered, training program for kids with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis that teaches them how to cope with their pain and provides information on what to tell their peers. However, athletic participation, certainly for young boys, is a major issue and is always not a likely possibility for such children. We like to look for other ways of participation with athletic teams and not to downplay the importance of being a trainer or some participation without great athletic outcome. We often talk to coaches and see if they can make alternatives for allowing kids to participate.