How to prepare a child for vaccination

Vaccination is one of the most important components of the health of each of us. From the first days of life, a baby is protected from the risk of getting some forms of the infectious diseases that exist in the environment. As long as infectious diseases exist somewhere in the world and there is a vaccine against them, it is important is to vaccinate your child. Vaccination is also a good way to maintain herd (collective) immunity to existing infectious diseases and to also to protect the population against a new diseases that occur periodically in the world.

Getting the vaccine can be painful for your child. This is why it is important that both you and your child get prepared for this event. In the first year, vaccination is frequent, and your baby is too young to understand why it is important to her, what awaits for her and how to behave. However, these explanations are very useful later. What a one-month-old baby can understand when she is getting the vaccines is your emotional readiness - your calmness, security and the sense of protection you can give her.

How to do it?

It is important that the preparation for vaccination in the first few months of life is done by a parent who has a positive attitude and who can effectively control his/her fear of the needle/injection. Your constant communication with the baby, while receiving the vaccine, messages of tenderness and love, caressing and whispering, will give her the feeling that you are with her, that she can feel safe. Your attitude will also be combined by the behaviour of the medical staff that perform these things routinely and is experienced with these procedures. In agreement with the staff, you will also find the way that is the shortest, best and most painless for you and your baby. These first experiences will project later on all subsequent experiences with vaccination, so make sure that the first experiences passes with as few emotional consequences as possible.

After the end of the first year, you can talk to the child and prepare for him/her before going to get the vaccine.. For some children, such as children who find it harder to adapt or have a harder time with frustrations, this pre-preparation is extremely important because it reduces the experience of stress, and thus the emotional consequences of stress due to vaccination. What many parents are already using are imitative and role-playing games, which we can call "doctor's games" by one name. In these games, it is especially interesting for children to give a "bottle" to mom and dad and other family members. They rejoice when they demonstrate power, and for you, it is an opportunity to show the child and encourage him to endure the pain without excessive reactions.

It is important not to hide the truth from the child during the preparation for each type of injection. Offer your child-specific strategies for coping with pain, and agree on what would be the best strategy for your child. For example, you can say, "yes, it will hurt you, but we will blow (or we will count) and it will help us get over the pain faster" ... or "we will hold your hand, hold me as tight as you can while it hurts", it will help the child to overcome the pain. Whatever you come up with and participate in together is a good strategy! The child, like all of us, usually only needs empathy for what he is going through.

Important!

We do not advise you to use these opportunities to adopt the role of a "matcho man", to provoke a feeling of shame if he cries or is afraid of injections, etc. We also do not advise you to support the adoption of the role of a "weak girl" on this occasion, who "can" cry only because she is a girl. In this way, you can deprive the child of empathy and understanding, which will only intensify the reactions of fear, resistance, stress and its consequences. These seemingly banal mistakes can develop a child's fear of the doctor in general, which can permanently make it difficult to take care of your child's health.