VOLUME 32 • NUMBER 1
WINTER 2014
Promoting Play in the Child Life Community
for Crossing Cultural and Generational Divides
8 9 Playrooms in North America Corner: Interview with 11 Research Children’s National Medical Let’s Play: Effective Playroom Programming
Center Research Team
In Focus: Essential Oils as an Adjunct to Pre-Operative Preparation of Children for Outpatient Surgical Procedures Frequently Asked Research Questions
Child life specialists use play for many purposes, including establishing rapport, educating, and encouraging the expression of emotions. (Pictured here, Crystal Soberg, CCLS, plays with patients in a LeBonheur Children’s Hospital playroom.)
Child Life Alphabet
INSIDE
2 President’s Perspective 3 From the Executive Director Meaning: Loose 4 Co-Creating Parts in the 7th Dimension Maps and Life Lines: 6 Play New and Borrowed Techniques
Photo courtesy of LeBonheur Children’s Hospital
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ypically, when we think of the word “play,” we think of theoretical definitions posed by scholars long before our field was established, broad definitions that have helped child life specialists to carve their niche into the healthcare team and other community settings. In this issue of the Bulletin, we are pleased to feature articles by three winners of conference presentation scholarships awarded as part of the Advancing the Field of Play for Hospitalized Children Initiative, supported through a grant from Disney. Each presenter’s article introduces a unique way of translating some of these theories into action for patients and families around the world. Whether a recipe for play maps and life lines from Deb Vilas, a description of playroom practices from Victoria White, or a consideration of loose parts play from Deb Vilas, Caitlin Koch, and Loxy Passmore, these articles demonstrate some of the ways that child life specialists continue to break the mold every day in developing new techniques for helping children and families to cope with the challenges of hospitalization and treatment. And they do so using the true language of childhood – play.
V is for Volition: Turning Distraction into Planned Alternate Focus Anne Luebering Mohl, PhD, CCLS and Joy Goldberger, MS
T
he major goal of procedural support is to empower children and their families with a sense of mastery that will carry over into future challenging situations. Often, distraction is the default intervention of choice for staff and families, and if it results in completion of the procedure, we may conclude that distraction was a useful tool. But is the goal of child life intervention just to make a procedure “go well”? Can a sense of mastery truly be gained from distraction? Employing the child’s volition to transform distraction into planned alternate focus better aligns our intervention with the goal of empowering the child. Distraction for child life specialists often consists of holding an age-appropriate book, toy, or app between the child and the
distress-provoking event to divert his or her focus from the medical proceedings. Afterwards, the child life specialist may document that “patient was supported through distraction,” but what this really means is “I drew the child’s attention away from the noxious stimulus.” When a child life specialist distracts a child, the active agent in that situation is the child life specialist. The child is relatively passive, just having their attention pulled away by the child life specialist. Procedural success should not depend on the child life specialist’s distraction efforts, but on a child’s own coping processes. A child who is not the active agent in the interaction is not building coping skills and gaining mastery over a challenging situation. Distraction involves the layering of one intense stimulus on top of another. For a continued on page 10