Customer Reviews

When a Hug Won't Fix the Hurt : Walking Your Child Through Crisis

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This is an incredible, "must have" book for helping a child cope with a serious, chronic, or terminal illness. It is written by Christian youth minister, Karen Dockrey, who shares the wisdom gained through one daughter's bout with leukemia, and another daughter's life with hearing loss.

Ms. Dockrey gives specific "plans of action" for dealing with your grief and anger, letting friends help with household and parenting chores, parenting your ill child, dealing with your child's school, and very importantly, how to deal with the numerous hospital stays and procedures (including how to help your child deal with chemotherapy and/or other pain and suffering). She also advises those who wish to help a family in need, such as how and where to offer help.

This book is definitely Christian in nature, filled with scripture references to support every facet of one's struggle with an "uncommon" child. I especially cherish the chapter "Walk on Through Anger." Ms. Dockrey offers very concrete frameworks for coping with the crippling emotions of grief, anger, and jealousy. She gives the reader tender assurances of God's love and presence in the midst of tragedy. There are also the words to help a child come to terms with his or her own death; which later helped my children cope with the sudden death of their 13-year-old cousin.

This book had fallen out-of-print, and was returned in this newer edition because of popular demand by readers like myself. My own copy of this book is four years old, well-loved, and filled with yellow highlighting and a list of scripture references in the end papers. It is in my bag whenever my daughter and I are at the hospital, for the procedures she needs for congenital kidney problems. The wisdom in this book has sustained all of our family through many difficult times.

If you have, or are near to, a child with a chronic or terminal illness, I promise this book will ease your life in some way.