We have another fantastic guest spotlight and giveaway for you today! I am happy to introduce Christina a mother, Occupational Therapist and creator of Child Inspired.
CHILD INSPIRED creates innovative tools to ease anxieties during childhood hospitalizations and medical recoveries. We feature “Visual Get Well Maps” that can be individualized with a child’s name and photos in order to help a child visualize their progress and goals, and create a keepsake that illustrates their perseverance. Our child-friendly illustrations include a repositionable sticker that is moved along a path by the medical team to reflect the child’s progress, and themed “neutral zones” designed to avoid backward movement along the path during setbacks or unexpected procedures. Our passion is to enhance age-appropriate, child-centered communication between children and their medical teams, and ease a difficult road to recovery when children and families are facing childhood illness, disease or injury.
As an Occupational Therapist and mother of 2 children, I created Child Inspired after the hospitalization of my 5 year-old son, Andrew, merged these two primary roles in my life. My passion to think creatively and utilize multi-sensory strategies to enhance the ability of others to reach their greatest potential is both the foundation and driving force of Child Inspired.
When our son Andrew faced a sudden onset of life-threatening illness, he required advanced life support until his medical condition could be stabilized. It took days before his medical team could give us any indication of his prognosis, of how long his hospitalization might last, or what his road ahead would look like.
Since young children have limited capacities to understand time concepts in their regular daily environments (much less hospital settings where days and nights blur together), I was overwhelmed with anxiety of how I would answer his plea, “Mommy, When can I go home?!” Recognizing that auditory processing is extremely limited during stressful events, and that visual aids can enhance comprehension, I asked a friend to make an interactive, multi-sensory tool to improve his understanding of the process. So the concept of the Visual Get Well Map was born of my intense desire to communicate to our son that he was improving and would get home. Even with our homemade version, we began to see that it became a valuable communication tool between our son and his medical team. His medical team began engaging him in “child friendly” dialogue regarding his progress by moving his car along his road during their daily rounding. And when his car finally reached the finish line, we felt overwhelming joy because there truly is NO PLACE LIKE HOME for a child and family spending prolonged time in a hospital setting. With our son’s medical crisis etched in our hearts, and the help of a wonderful artist to bring our concept to fruition, Child Inspired began printing illustrated Visual Get Well Maps on a firm, durable 12×18” surface that can be used easily at the bedside, cleaned/sanitized quickly, and has directions printed directly on the back for family and health care professional reference.
I hope you might take a few minutes to learn more about our product, and it how it might benefit the children and families that you serve. Please visit www.ourchildinspired.com for more information regarding Child Inspired, or to place an order.
- Priced at $19.95. Bulk pricing is available (please fill out an inquiry on the Contact Tab of our website)
- Short in-service trainings can be provided upon request
- Customization and/or modifications can be made to tailor our product to the specific patient population or program needs of your facility
- Portion of proceeds benefits Ronald McDonald House Charities
Thank you for your time, and the amazing work you do to better the health and lives of the children and families you serve!!!
-Christina
Click here to contact Christina or follow on Facebook
We will be giving away 4 Visual Get Well Maps in our giveaway! The themes are the Road Home, Princess Path, Journey Home and Trail Home.
Choose one or more ways to enter:
1. Sign up for email notifications at ChildLifeMommy.com and leave comment below
2. Facebook: Follow Child Life Mommy and leave a comment on post
3. Facebook: Follow Child Inspired and leave a comment about the giveaway
4. Twitter: Follow, Like and RT the post to @ChildLifeMommy
5. Instagram: Follow @ChildLifeMommy, Like and tag a friend in the post
Good Luck! Winner will be chosen 6/25/15
