Review: Monkey Wellbeing Storybooks, Activity Guide and Puppet
By Jen Smith
Making any kind of emergency visit to the hospital with your child usually means one of two things.
Firstly it can be an incredibly stressful emergency situation or secondly, signal a fairly long tedious wait for less dramatic yet urgent cases.
As well as the pain and fear experienced by your child from being ill or injured, there is also the fear of various different medical procedures for which there will be no or little time to transition into.
As a way of filling waiting time or distracting ill children, the Monkey Wellbeing storybooks and activities are perfect.
And as a visual guide for A&E, blood testing and having an operation, they are brilliant.
The Monkey Wellbeing resources were created by Helen Sadler, a mother whose three-year-old daughter had to go through serious lung surgery. Helen rightly found there were no suitable resources for young children and so went on to create the Monkey Wellbeing resources.
The current range of resources include:
Monkey goes to Hospital
Monkey has an Operation Book
Monkey’s Guide to Healthy Living and NHS Services Storybook
A Monkey Visits the Emergency Department activity guide
Monkey has a Blood Test Book
The Monkey puppet
NHS explorer sticker sets
When Chopsy Baby received sets of Monkey Wellbeing Storybooks and Activities to review, it became immediately obvious how brilliant they were. But how they would come into their own in a personal situation proved that all hospital shops with an emergency ward should stock these wonderful packs to help with calming, transitioning and making the whole hospital experience much less stressful for families.
Review by Chopsy Baby’s Jen Smith with seven-year-old Sid Tudor Smith.
One morning on my way to work, I received a phone call from my child’s headteacher, the kind of call that no parent wants to receive. My son had an accident in the playground and the emergency services had been called and were taking him to hospital.
The fear I felt was nothing compared to the pain and fear my child was feeling. In a sudden rush, he was having to experience all the different aspects of emergency treatment without going through any kind of transitioning which I would usually do.
Between treatment and operations, there were periods of waiting, which he found incredibly difficult being a nil by mouth. There was only so many times we could turn a vomit bowl into a trilby or a triangular bandage into a pirate hat.
With the waiting, his fear about the very soon-to-be operation and skin numbing for the cannula, the Monkey Wellbeing Activity pack would have been a perfect method of distraction and age appropriate information. Having to stay in hospital in a ward afterwards brought even more levels of boredom and irritation, which the Emergency Department Activity Guide would have quelled.
Part of the overall package includes a soft, cuddly Monkey puppet which is ideal for cuddling, amusing distraction or play.
The Monkey Wellbeing Storybook and Activity Series is brilliant for occupying younger children when disaster strikes, or an operation is booked. If you have ‘one of those children’ it’s probably worth having at home on standby, for when you either get the call from the headteacher, or find yourself scrambling for the taxi in the middle of the night.
The Monkey Resources were also reviewed by Samantha Livingstone with three-year-old Zac.
Samantha Says: “Zac has had three operations already in his life. He is shortly going to be having number four. As he has got older, he is more aware of what is going on but also more wary.
“For this reason, the book about how you have a blood test and monkey has an operation have been very useful. They are very child friendly and great for children from two years upwards.
“There are clear photographs featuring Monkey in the exact situation and showing exactly what is going to happen.
“I really think these books help take the fear out of what is going on by being able to communicate to the child on their level.
“Of course, the activity pack is great for occupying Zac on the wards which can be very boring for bed bound children.
“Zac especially likes the monkey puppet which he has been sleeping with. It’s good for him to befriend it as it is a consistent thing between the books and him taking it into the hospital.
“I’m going to recommend my child’s nursery has a set for their library.”
More Monkey resources are due for release soon and are to include:
Monkey has Asthma Book
Monkey’s Asthma Guide
Monkey has Type 1 Diabetes Book
Monkey Starts School Book
Monkey’s book on Hearing
Monkey has an Injection Book
Monkey’s Guide to your hospital stay
The Monkey resources are available to buy from www.monkeywellbeing.com
10/10