Child Afraid Of Syringes? Here's A Trick To Prepare Your Little One Mentally For The COVID-19 Vaccine

Illustration (Ron Lach/Pexels)

JAKARTA - The experience of being pricked by a needle during a vaccination when a child is young can affect how they feel and react to the next vaccination. So, it is important for parents to reduce the possibility of negative experiences experienced by their little ones, especially those related to injection needles.

According to The Conservation page, Monday, December 27, at least there are a few tricks parents can do to help prepare their children for the COVID-19 vaccine.

The first step is to consider when to provide information to children about vaccines. For children under five years, you should notify on the same day. For five to six-year-olds, you can tell them a day or two in advance, while seven-year-olds tell them a week in advance.

But if your child has a phobia of needles, they may need significant help from experts with the help of a safe environment to calm their thoughts and feelings. As well as learn some child stress management strategies.

The next step is to consider help from a child psychologist. After establishing a trusting relationship with the therapist, a medical device play therapy session involving role-play scenarios can be conducted. The goal is to make children sensitive to medical equipment. Starting with toy medical kits and moving on to more authentic medical kits.

The therapist provides information to children by showing them how the medical devices work. The child can then develop mastery by injecting their doll or teddy, while the therapist provides information on how to overcome a child's fear of injections.

Some children need a session or two, but for a child with a phobia of needles it may take up to ten sessions or more. The therapist can also teach parents how to be supportive or calming during needle-handling.

As a parent, you can also introduce some medical equipment toys to your child. From there, you can see if your child seems interested or away. If they are curious and are looking for more information, show and tell your little one about the vaccine they should be taking and the benefits.

For example, you could say the importance of getting vaccinated is to help stop the transmission of the Corona Virus to those closest to them, such as siblings or grandparents.

Finally, for children who don't like playing with medical devices, distraction techniques may be helpful. Try introducing a new toy or object that can attract your child's attention before and during the vaccine injection so that it can distract your child from the fear of needles.