Åbo Akademi University, Department of Caring Science
STOLPE SOLVEIG: Children´s tools for promoting their own existence in
connection with illness and during their stay in hospital
Master´s thesis, 82 pages
Supervisor: Professor Unni Å. Lindström
December 2000
Key Words: child, existence, hospital, illness, caring science
Being admitted to hospital and falling ill is very hard for a grown-up. How does this
feel for a child, who does not have the concepts or the experience needed to be able to
understand what it is all about? If a nurse cannot encounter the child in its struggle of
suffering, the child may become lonely, helpless and unhappy. Caring science creates
knowledge about how suffering can be alleviated. The aim of this study is to
contribute to the alleviation of the child´s suffering when it is admitted to hospital and
in connection with illness.
The questions at issue in the study are:
 What are the tools with which the child may promote its own existence?
 How are these affected by illness and by being admitted to hospital?
The study begins with a historical retrospect where different trends that have been
prevalent in the education and treatment of children are presented. Then the
perspective of caring science is presented in connection with knowledge about the
child. This part makes up the preunderstanding of the study. The author aims at
merging this horizon of preunderstanding together with a horizon consisting of four
theorists, which are Montessori, Winnicott, Bowlby and Erikson. The texts of the
theorists are interpreted by means of a hermeneutic method. The interpretation is made
through the dialectics of question-answer directed to the theorists´ texts. The overall
question is: what are the tools with which the child may promote its own existence?
The emerging hypothetical model is then related to knowledge about the child in
hospital and the sick child.
As an answer to this question, a hypothetical model for the child´s tools with which it
may promote its own existence emerges. This model consists of an outer and an inner
aspect. The inner aspect includes the child´s natural resources, i.e. curiosity, activity
and faith. These inner strengths are connected with the outer ones. The outer strengths
are responsibility, confirmation, curiosity, knowledge and a feeling of having a value
and hope.
Relating the knowledge to the specific of the context gave it a meaning and a form.
The metaphor for this form is the parachute. The more support the child´s inner
strenght gets from its outer strenght, the bigger the parachute becomes. A big
parachute makes the landing safe in an unfamiliar and frightening reality that is made
up of hospital and illness.