Palliative Care: Helping Children Plan to Remember their Loved One's Day

This video was created in 2011 and we are sharing it in memory of Dr. Christine Newman, one of the pioneers of pediatric palliative care.

Dr. Newman explains how children who are dying worry that they will not be remembered by family and friends. Dr. Newman encourages children to think of ways that the child's family can remember them. View video for more.

This video is provided for general information only. It does not replace a diagnosis or medical advice from a healthcare professional who has examined your child and understands their unique needs. Please speak with your doctor to check if the content is suitable for your situation.

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TRANSCRIPT

Kids are much more like adults than grown-ups sometimes give you credit for. And that is you want to know that your family is going to be okay, but kids worry that their family is going to be too okay. Will my family be too okay is really, how will I be remembered in five years from now, 10 years from now. Will it make a difference to anybody that I was living on this earth. And actually, some of the work I do with the kids who are dying, is I tell them that part of their job is to think of ways that their family can remember them. So I'll give you one example that I do with all the kids.  

So I'll pretend that it's me. So I would say 'Chris, what month were you born in?'. And I would say 'January'. And then I would say 'What is your favourite color?'.
And I would answer 'Yellow'. And I would say 'What is your favourite food?'. And I would say 'Pasta'.
So the job that I would give my family, if I were dying, would be every year in January on my birthday everyone in my family needs to wear something yellow and they need to sit down and they need to eat pasta. And that's called a 'Chris' day and they need to do that every year for as long as any of them are alive. And when, if I have brothers and sisters, they grow up and get married they need to do that with their husbands and wives because that's how they get to know me. 
And they need to do that with their kids because their kids aren't going to get to meet aunt Chris, but they're going to learn about her. They're going to learn that she loved yellow and she loved pasta and then maybe there'd be a couple other Chris days. Maybe one day in the summer it would be that you had to go to Canada's Wonderland and  you had to ride the biggest roller coaster you could find and just as you're going down the big hill, what everyone in my family would have to do is yell as loud as they could 'Chris would love this!' And so there's another Chris day. So those are ways that I think we can all help our families to really, really remember us. And to really make us real for people who may never meet us.

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Видео Palliative Care: Helping Children Plan to Remember their Loved One's Day канала AboutKidsHealth - The Hospital for Sick Children