City's Experts Include One On Keeping Sick Children Busy While Staying In Bed

City’s Experts Include One On Keeping Sick Children Busy While Staying In Bed

This is a city of experts. There are people here who can identify fish by their scales; specialists who can pin-point a lesion in the middle of the brain: authorities on the meaning of "logos” in the Greek version of the Bible; technicians, master-minds, inventors.

But who knows how to keep a sick child busy and happy while he is confined to bed?

The unreleased energy of a bedridden youngster can cast pallor on the playroom, making it looke like a deserted mining town. The demands of illness can squeeze all the idealism out of motherhood by drawing apron strings tighter and tighter.

And it is all because there apparently is no expert who can answer the child's simple but baffling question, "What can I do?” What-can-I-do becomes the whining byline of a wheezing, sore-throated youngster who, in addition to being sick, is sick of being sick.

Even An Expert For That

Well, there is an expert who has the answer. And unlike most experts who are experts because they talk a language nobody else understands, this one talks a language immediately accessible to mothers and children alike.

Harvey Katchan, therapist, teacher, philosopher, and child psychologist, runs the Galen Workshop of the University Hospital School. His job is to work with and help sick children.

"The first thing to be remembered,” warns Harvey, "is that sick children don’t like being sick. Unlike some adults, sickness very quickly bores the child.”

You say, every mother knows that. Certainly, but that’s what, makes Harvey the expert's expert. He has cut through a maze of highly technical material, spent years with sick children, and has come out with very commonplace observations. That’s what makes him a particularly good counselor on the subject; he tells you what you already knows, adding a few practical suggestions.

'Structure Situation'

"Structure the play situation,” advises Harvey. (At times he admits to sounding like a specialist.)

"All I mean is, select an idea for the day. An idea like Indians, vegetables, transportation, or rocks. Then collect all the material you can from the attic, material which the child can use in building around and illustrating the idea.”

That is what is meant by “structuring the play situation." The idea is the unit; the materials transform the idea into concrete objects. The amazing thing is that a combination of an idea and seemingly useless materials like paper cups, tongue depressors, thread spools, wallpaper books, and calendars, works miracles.

Mrs. Mildred Walton, head of the Hospital School, in speaking of Katchan's role in the workshop, said, “Harvey Katchan, as a man, shows that the task of keeping the dust out of little active minds is not just a woman’s job,”

Students At Wayne

Katchan did undergraduate work at Wayne and the University. He received his master's degree in educational psychology and a special certificate in the education of emotionally disturbed children. He worked as an attendant at the Neuropsychiatric Institute here while doing work, and he participated in the summer activities of the University’s Fresh Air Camp.

He knows children. But what’s even more important, he likes them well enough to report to the University Hospital School at 8 a.m. for a full day’s program of doing what exhausts most parents in one hour: Keeping bed-ridden, sick children happy and busy.

Katchan receives his salary from contributions made to the Galens Society of Undergraduate Medical Students. The quarter you throw into the bucket when the Galens hold their annual Tag Day on Dec. 4 goes in part to pay Harvey, in part to buy a can of purple paint, in part to furnish sand for the mobile sandbox in the Galen Workshop.

Practical Suggestions

Katchan makes a few more practical suggestions:

1) There are books on the market on the subject of entertaining the sick child;

2) Make mealtime a special occasion by calling it a party. It is amazing, says Harvey, what kids will eat at party;

3) Fifteen minutes of planning the night before (and discussing the plan with the child) will save mother a lot of running to and from trying to find the answer to the question, "What can I do?"

4) Find a sizeable carton and label it, “Emergency Play.” Every time you run across an empty spool, a scrap of aluminum foil, a spare box of crayons, toss them into the carton. These articles can be pressed into service when noses start running, temperatures rise, and sneezes cloud the air.

Harvey warns that it is hard to be creative when you have to be. And since parents know very early in the game that wheezes and sneezes are part of raising children, articles of play collected lesiurely will pay handsome dividends in an emergency.

Katchan knows. He’s an expert.