“Is this really doing anything?” A skeptic parent looked at me as her two-year-old daughter mindlessly splashed syringes in a basin of water.
“Oh, yes.” I confidently replied. “This play helps normalize medical equipment for your daughter and helps her have an outlet to process her experiences.”
But internally I, too, questioned if my intervention was supporting this sweet two-year-old in processing her horrific hospitalizations. Truth be told, like this skeptical mom, I looked at this experience of the toddler splashing around and saw it exactly as that: splashing. Perhaps zealous developmental theorists would not be so quick to demean the exploratory, cognitive, and physical experiences taking place.
But yes, that same two-year-old continued to scream, protest, and fight for every port access months following. Did my medical play “intervention” even help?
I have doubted the validity of child life more than once. I have doubted if we are “essential”. I have doubted if my hard work was really worth it…worth the disheartening salary, worth the condescension from that nurse, worth the dismissal of our services by the resolved family, worth schlepping 500 teddy bears across the hospital by myself, worth being asked to simply babysit patients or siblings, worth being in the room when the patient continues to cry despite my best efforts with bubbles and light spinners.
This week on the Child Life Cooperative Instagram page, I posed a reflective question: What inspires you to keep going?
When day after day, things don’t feel “worth it” (your role is devalued, you feel the weight of burnout, you are asked to work outside of your job description, other roles in the hospital are elevated, ETC.), what helps you to keep going?
I will share just a few of my motivations, and I encourage you to sit and think of your own.
1) I am inspired to keep going when…I know I am giving voice to the child and family.
I have sat with children and families who are told the cancer has returned, death is imminent, there is nothing left they can do. I have held the sobbing parents, heard the crushing cries of anguish, wiped away tears as I look into eyes of deep fear. And as I sit, as I listen, as I draw near, I validate. I acknowledge. I invite space to grieve, space to mourn, space to speak their own voice. And as that space is created, I have seen how children and families experience a greater sense of empowerment to advocate, to process, to ask further questions of their medical care team, to take an inch forward.
2) I am inspired to keep going when…I recognize big things happen in small moments.
I may not know the impact each intervention has on a patient or family. Some may feel meaningless or insignificant. Some interventions may easily affirm the value of child life. Perhaps it is in the time when I feel my role is devalued to “babysitting” of the unattended sibling when there is an especially beautiful moment to encourage, build up, and empower that child. Maybe a call to simply drop off a red crayon to the lonely and scared four-year-old in room 22 led to a valuable therapeutic imaginative play session where the child was able to express his fears and misconceptions of surgery. You never know what a day will hold.
But we must remember this: our measure, worth, and value as child life specialists isn’t always easily seen. Our measure, worth, and value as child life specialists comes from how we make others feel. Caring for people involves so much more than the physical, surface-level needs. We care for the deeper, unseen emotional and spiritual needs of the whole person.
3) I am inspired to keep going when…I remember the power of play.
Call it splashing, call it medical play. In that moment, I try to hold on to the joy I see in that child. The moment when the child is able to let her guard down, do something she isn’t used to doing, and play…no matter if it achieves the goal I intended or not. I know it achieved the goal of saying to that child, “I see you, dear two-year-old. Let’s play together…you take the reins.”
So, what inspires YOU to keep going?