For Kids With Cancer, It’s Always Back-to-School Season

For Kids With Cancer, It’s Always Back-to-School Season: News

For Kids With Cancer, It’s Always Back-to-School Season

Article date: August 12, 2011

For most children in the US, back to school time comes around every August or September, and with it comes registration, clothes shopping, new school books, and often excitement, anticipation, or jitters. But for children with a serious chronic illness like cancer, continuous breaks to get treatment or recover from its side effects can make it feel like they’re always getting ready to go back to school.

For these children, ensuring a smooth return to the classroom takes more than a trip to the mall. The best approach, pediatric experts agree, involves a coordinated effort -- beginning as soon as cancer is diagnosed -- by family and friends, the child’s school, the health-care team, the treatment center, and, most important, the child with cancer.

Why the Rush to Return to School?

Thanks to better treatments and vast improvements in survival rates, pediatric cancer researchers have been able to learn a lot about the effects cancer treatments have on children many years after treatment ends. For example, we now know that problems with learning and emotional development, with varying degrees of severity, commonly plague childhood cancer survivors.

As a way of keeping these problems to a minimum, parents are strongly advised to find ways to continue their child’s education when hospitalization is necessary or when cancer treatments leave the child too tired or ill to go to school.

Keeping up with schoolwork, even partially, speeds a student’s reintegration into school and makes it much less stressful. And a quick return benefits everyone. It sends the child a clear message that he or she has a bright future and potential for a full recovery from cancer. It helps parents’ lives become more normal. And it allows siblings some much-needed extra attention.


An Action Plan for Parents

To get a sense of how quickly a child can fall behind, parents should think of how much catching up they have to do after just a couple of weeks away from work, says Laurie Leigh, director of the School Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

No matter how well children keep up with schoolwork, readjusting to the school environment becomes more difficult the longer the absence, and peer groups become more distant. Parents can help reduce away time by taking the following steps, even before treatment begins:

• Get the ball rolling. When a child can’t attend school, Leigh says, your options are home-based services provided through your local school system or hospital-based services, if available where your child is being treated. Initiate contact with both institutions to see where you stand.

• Ask for help at school. Even hospital-based services must be coordinated through the local school system, Leigh points out. Quickly get key people in the school involved on your child's behalf -- a favorite teacher, principal or superintendent, or guidance counselor. They can help make sure interim lesson plans are put together for the hospital- or home-based tutor, keep classmates up to date, and help advocate for your child rights or need for special accommodations.

RESOURCES:

* Read about The Long and the Short of It, a new book that helps children with cancer cope with hair loss ►
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/news/News/book-helps-children-with-cancer-cope-with-hair-loss.

Different sets of circumstances that occur during treatment breaks can dampen a child's enthusiasm for returning to school, and hurt his or her efforts at reintegration.

Again, parental involvement can help. Some ways include:

• Keep friends in the loop. No child wants to fall too far behind in knowledge of what his or her social group deems cool and uncool, of who likes whom, and what clothes or music have recently been classified as dorky. If that happens, watch your child's enthusiasm for school plummet.

To keep your child socially connected, Leigh suggests an occasional visit from a classmate, or a computer chat session if your child is old enough. Siblings who are around the same age can help by carrying important gossip, the latest jokes, and even homework back and forth from school. Even if your child isn’t well enough to return to school, you may be able to get the doctor’s OK for a short visit to the classroom.

Depending on your child’s age, the use of email, phone calls, text messages, and social media like Facebook and Twitter may help your child remain connected with friends.

• Get workload adjusted when needed. The school contacts you made early on can prove invaluable if you need help getting an unmanageable workload lightened. Expectations for what your child accomplishes should be reasonable, but also flexible if necessary, Leigh says.

• Educate teachers and friends. Keeping teachers aware of what your child goes through medically helps them recognize certain side effects and understand the reasons your child misses school. Educating classmates about cancer, specifically their friend's cancer, can help reduce anxiety, teasing, and social shunning.

After Treatment Ends

If a child seems to have a learning problem after treatment has ended, parents should consider approaching a school psychologist or counselor to request testing.

In fact, if the child has had radiation to the brain, it's a good idea to ask for testing whether you notice a problem or not. Testing will evaluate reading, writing, and math skills as well as memory, comprehension, attention, concentration, and fine motor skills.

Armed with that information, the school may suggest your child could benefit from an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or 504 Plan. If your child meets all of the stringent legal requirements to qualify as a special education student, the plan is called an IEP; if not, it’s a 504 Plan.

An IEP or 504 Plan is developed by parents and teachers to meet the individual needs of a student. It describes a child’s learning problem, sets specific educational goals, and refers to other services that might be needed, such as occupational therapy or speech therapy. As a rule, the plan should be regularly evaluated, with adjustments made as necessary.

For more information, see “Children Diagnosed With Cancer: Returning to School.” ►
http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/ChildrenandCancer/WhenYourChildHasCancer/children-diagnosed-with-cancer-returning-to-school

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