Child Life

What is Child Life?

Child life specialists are trained professionals with expertise in helping children and their families overcome life’s most challenging events (the definition from the child life council website). I had no idea what a child life specialist was until this internship. During my practicum at the Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare I knew the child life specialist as the friendly lady that referred patients to music therapy, but they are much more than that.

I have had the opportunity to shadow most of the child life department. The child life department consists of six child life specialists, one school teacher, and one music therapist. A definition that clarified child life for me is that they have the same objectives as music therapy but the interventions are different. In future posts I will go into detail about interventions they use that can benefit music therapy. In particular, observing a child life specialist (CLS) during procedural support has been extremely helpful.

The child life major is heavy in psychology and child development. While music therapy is normalizing an environment with patient preferred music, child life (CL) does the same idea with patient preferred activities. During procedural support nurses turn to CL to assess if the patient needs sedation. CL act as support for the patients, one CLS stated that she feels like the middleman sometimes. CLS build rapport and trust with patients, and patients confide in them what they are scared to tell the physicians or nurses. During my meeting with the CL coordinator, she said that child life and music therapy are very complimentary. After observations, I can’t see how a children’s hospital functions without both of these fields.