Imagine coming to the scene of a car accident and being told it’s your child that’s been hit. But your child is not there. She's been taken to the trauma centre, a 30-minute drive away.
Or entering a room and finding your teen unconscious from a self-inflicted injury.
Or hearing a code blue called after taking your child to Emergency with what you thought was the flu. He's suddenly developed a life-threatening illness.
For almost three decades, Holland Bloorview family therapist Caron Gan has heard hundreds of stories from parents whose children suffered a brain injury as a result of unexpected trauma or illness.
“One of the most important things I’ve learned from working with families is the power of supporting hope,” Caron says. “We cannot take it away from parents. Hope is what helps parents keep going for their child. It helps them to catch their breath, so they can be at their best for their child, and be active in their care.”
According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 80 per cent of parents who witness a child’s accident, self-injury or sudden, serious illness experience symptoms of traumatic stress. For about 20 to 30 per cent, these problems will persist in a way that affects everyday life.
“I see a range of responses,” Caron says. “Some parents need to talk openly and candidly about how awful or horrific the experience was. Then I have parents who are not yet ready to talk. It’s way too painful. Avoidance is a common feature of traumatic stress. I know underneath, they’re all experiencing high levels of distress, but coping with it differently.”
Parents often struggle with sleep. They may have trouble falling asleep. They may have nightmares, or wake up in terror, recalling how they found their child, or what doctors told them at the hospital. “They remember every word and detail, and when they describe those earlier experiences, it’s seared into their memory,” Caron says. “Common things I hear from parents are that they were told their child will not walk, or talk, or be able to go to school like they did in the past. Some parents are even asked about organ donation.”
Supporting parent hope is essential, Caron says. “My role is to gauge where the parent is at, and to walk alongside them in that journey. It’s not uncommon for a distraught parent to say ‘I don’t want to hear anything about my child’s brain injury unless I know he or she will have a 100 per cent recovery.’ I've learned that if I don’t hear what that parent is saying about how they want to remain hopeful, and launch into education about what can happen after brain injury, I’ve lost that parent. That parent will have difficulty opening up and trusting me to have further conversations.”
Parents’ readiness to accept their child’s current situation is a process that can’t be rushed. Hope is fluid, Caron says, and changes over time. “Initially, their hope may be that their child will live, and they are so relieved that their child survived. Then it may move to hope that my child will recover fully from their injury or illness. That may morph into hope that my child will make gains in rehab, will walk again or return to school, or adjust to their new normal. It changes from hope for survival, to hope for a full recovery, to hope for the child to live a good life, in spite of their illness or injury.”
Caron embraces the journey. “It’s not something I would try to change by giving a blunt reality check, or telling them what the literature says about outcomes. Families need time to slowly absorb the information, and their hope narrative will change over time.”
Caron says there are variations in how children heal from brain injuries, and offering the range of possibilities helps parents. “They want to know recovery can range from worst-case to best-case scenarios, and that there is no crystal ball. They want honesty from their healthcare providers, but the way it’s delivered can either shut them down, or help them hear what’s said.”
Knowing that most parents in their situation experience depression, anxiety, irritability, guilt and blame helps to normalize their feelings. “When I show parents a handout about what we call pediatric medical traumatic stress, I often hear a sigh of relief. They’ll say ‘You mean I’m normal?’ They need to be given permission to feel what they feel, and to know that it's okay. Acknowledging your feelings doesn't mean you are giving up hope, or will stop fighting for your child.”
Caron shares tools to help parents calm their symptoms of distress. It may be teaching grounding strategies if they're having flashbacks, to remind them that they aren’t reliving the event. For example, they may learn to name five things they see, hear, feel in their body, and smell, so they know they’re not “back in that nightmare.” They may be taught deep breathing exercises, to visualize a calm place where they feel safe, or to track their emotions in a journal.
Telling their story, in a guided way, is an important part of healing. “I really listen carefully, and with compassion, when families share the details,” Caron says. “They need to reprocess what they’ve been through, otherwise the distress gets locked in the emotional memory of their brain, and can be reactivated when they least expect it.” For example, when they hear a code blue on the unit.
Caron keeps a celebration board in her office where former inpatients have posted graduation pictures. “It helps to cut through some of that despair or fear of hearing the worst-case prognosis. I can talk about how these young people got to know their brain injury, and how it affects them. That these young people had hoped for 100 per cent recovery, but they all had some persisting effects. However, they learned strategies to help them manage those effects, graduate from school and live a good life worth celebrating.”
Acquired disability happens out of the blue, and changes the child the family knew. In this way, it’s different from learning your child has a disability at birth, Caron notes. “These parents had memories and an imagined future with their child that didn’t involve disability. These parents have to mourn the loss of the child as he or she was.”
Brain injury may alter a child’s abilities and personality. “Psychologically or emotionally, the child may feel to the parent like a very different person. Mourning, and letting go of the child that they remember, is really difficult. And outsiders don’t always make it easier.”
That’s because children with brain injury often have an excellent physical recovery, and the lingering effects on thinking, concentration, memory, personality and mood are invisible.
“People will say ‘It’s so great that Johnny’s walking now. He’s in rehab and he’s going to get back to the way he was.’ That creates more distress for families who are grieving inside. They may be told ‘It’s time to move on. Just focus on the positive, and put this behind you.’ But that type of positivity is almost dismissive of the pain they’re going through. Parents may shut down or isolate themselves when their feelings are misunderstood or minimized.”
Sometimes, changes in a child’s abilities, behaviour or emotions may not show up for years, when some people have forgotten that the child even had a brain injury. Often these changes emerge in the teen years, so it's difficult to know if they're due to the brain injury or to adolescence.
Being part of a support community where other parents understand exactly what you’re going through helps. Caron is working with eight parents at Holland Bloorview and the Ontario Brain Injury Association (OBIA)to co-design a four-hour parent workshop that will be launched here in September, and then rolled out across the province. “It’s a place where parents can be comforted, validated and supported, all while learning from one another.”
Traumatic stress in parents tends to be under-identified, Caron says. “There may be a tendency to dismiss the severity of trauma for parents. People may think ‘parents weren’t the ones who went through the traumatic event—it was their child.’ We know that these events have a huge impact on families.”
Clinicians need to remind themselves that they often don’t have the full story of what a parent experienced before arriving here. “If the parent is irritable, or questions staff around what we’re doing, we can’t take it personally. We know from narrative groups with parents that many had to take their child to multiple Emergency rooms before anyone would listen to them.
“Sometimes, when parents are reactive, or presenting with high stress and anxiety, we need to take the time to hear what their fears are. Learning their back story helps put a different spin on it for us, as clinicians. It’s not about us. It’s about the parent needing to ensure their kid isn’t going to fall through the cracks, like they did before.”
You can register for the OBIA parent education and training program, or, for more information, e-mail Caron at cgan@hollandbloorview.ca.
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