{Child Life}

You can now pre-order The Handbook of Child Life: A Guide for Pediatric Psychosocial Care at Amazon!

The Handbook of Child Life: A Guide for Pediatric Psychosocial Care

Children’s Hospital Omaha offers a Child Life Internship in the Spring and Fall. The upcoming deadline for the Fall session is May 5th. Their critera to even apply is one of the strictest I have seen, the first and foremost is you must have completed a 100 hour Child Life Practicum or have been employed as a Child Life Assistant for 250 hours or 6 months. There is also a $250 fee that covers liability insurance as well as needed textbooks. They accept one intern per semester.

A full information packet can be found here. The application form can be downloaded and filled out here. Good luck!

I’m curious for suggestions out there for solutions to inbetween employment if you are not yet Certified but want to do something that will give you an edge when applying for Child Life Specialist jobs. I realize it’s hard to be picky right now in these times, but I also think it helps tremendously to get all the related experience you can get. I know the popular feedback I have seen before has been nannying or being a preschool teacher, but any other suggestions? I know Child Life Assistant positions are great while you are working on Certification, but there are no hospitals near me who have Child Life Assistants. Thanks in advance for your input!

Also, if you have emailed me with questions and I haven’t answered you yet I promise I am working on catching up on all my email! Thanks!

I’ve been reading ‘The Elephant in the Playroom’ because I feel like a future Child Life Specialist can’t get enough doses of viewpoints from parents raising children with out of the ordinary challenges in daily development. Also because I am understandably intrigued with autism and other pervasive developmental disorders. I was able to pick up the book for $2, so that made me even more excited to read it! (I love a good bargain these days!) It seems like my list of books to read that will help me in my career are endless and as I cross more and more off my list it seems like a more possible task to plow through them all.

The book is a collection of essays written by parents (mostly mothers) of children with special needs. They chronicle their battles with schools, doctors, getting a correct diagnosis, well meaning but often hurtful advice from family members and how they learned to take care of themselves as well. It was an intense and emotional read because of the roller coaster it takes you on and how raw the accounts are. There is no sugar coating any of it, but it does balance out the harsh confessions and provides hope.

You can purchase the book here; The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About Raising Kids with Special Needs

StumbleUpon is a great site for finding more areas of the internet that would interest you. If you love this blog and already have an account, it would be great if you could go here and give it a thumbs up and a positive review. I would really appreciate it. Stumble is great because if you say you like one site, it will show you others that are similar. Be warned though, it is incredibly addicting!