Diabetes: Movie Analysis

Having diabetes as a child or your child being diagnosed with diabetes is comparable to a sudden death within the family. Children and their family go through the same stages that one would go through in the grieving process of losing someone close. “Whilst an actual death has not occurred, it is in many ways a death of a part of the body which requires an acceptance of loss and adjustment to a new life, without a functioning pancreas”. A mother of a little boy declares that “it was like a death, still feel it’s like a death learning about this, the failure of his body... he mourned himself.” She discusses how her child felt a lost. It was loss of a part of him that just decided to stop working. In the movie the child’s grief, children

Whilst he pays little attention to the possibility that the child might also experience a grief reaction, it seems reasonable to suggest this is likely to occur. Children will also need the opportunity to discuss the impact of the diagnosis before they can accept the additional responsibilities involved in caring for themselves”. In the movie the child’s grief, the children talked about their feelings in relation to their loved ones who passed away, in comparing this to children that have been diagnosed with diabetes the child must talk about losing the individual they once was before diabetes.To truly know how a child is feeling one must hear it from the child first hand. In the article living with type 1 diabetes: perceptions of children and their parents the children had the opportunity to draw a picture about their diabetes to illustrate how they were feeling about having diabetes rather than just talking about it. Using the method of drawing, allowed the child to show how they felt instead of saying what they were

This in a sense is the child’s grieving stage where they must learn to live with their loss. Just like the child the parents also “experienced many losses, including the loss of their previously healthy child, loss of their freedom and loss of confidence. Parents talked of their failure to protect their child from developing the condition, their concerns about being able to protect their child in the future and how this had affected their confidence as parents”. This illustrates that parents feel they are to blame for their child’s diagnoses. A mother declared “you never expect your child, you know, to be ill and I remember being in hospital and everyone was talking to me about this, diabetes. I just remember I weren’t taking it in, it was a big shock. I was crying, I was upset. When they were telling me other things, I had to do with him every day and I had to, he had to, even bringing him home, I was petrified, I just thought: ‘My poor child’”. This illustrates that parent’s fear just as much, if not more than the child that is diagnosed with diabetes. Eventually individuals will hit the point where their diabetes has become part of them. Diabetes no longer rules the individual instead they have learned to overcome and embrace their diabetes. An 18 year old who learned to accept her diabetes