Tips for Parents

If you are a parent of a child with a bleeding disorder, understanding and accepting your spouse’s reactions to difficult situations should help to ease some of the tension and stress you may be experiencing. Following are a few tips for moms and dads designed to help you do this.

Tips for Dads

• Understand your wife’s need to express her fears out loud and don’t dismiss her worries just to reduce the tension
• It’s okay to just listen—don’t always try to come up with a solution to every problem
• Get more involved in the home medical procedures with the child as well as doctor and clinic visits wherever possible
• Assess what might be helpful in keeping the household running and jump in before being asked
• Understand that there will be more demands on both of you and you both can adapt
• Don’t forget that you can be the happily married couple you were before your child was diagnosed, and can continue to do all of the things you used to do

Tips for Moms

• When your husband seems to take it all too lightly, just realize this is his way of coping and he is just as concerned as you are
• Put him in charge of learning all he can about treatment options and medical procedures. Let him be your Internet resource guide
• Understand that outside activities should still be a part of his life (and yours)
• Understand that there will be more demands on both of you and you both can adapt
• Include him in all phases of the care even when he cannot go to clinic visits. He should know everything you have learned even when he seems to be less interested
• And as above, don’t forget that you can be the happily married couple you were before your child was diagnosed, and can continue to do all of the things you used to do

Tips for Both of You

• Couples with children with chronic illnesses tend to isolate themselves from others. Don’t! Continue all of the friendship and family relationships as much, if not more, than you did previously