How to: Self-Monitoring for Kids - Childhood Cancer Awareness Month Topic

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and it’s recognized by organizations around the world to bring awareness to the disease and raise money for the families affected. One of the many struggles that kids with cancer face is incontinence. This can be difficult to deal with as children go back to school. In this blog, we’ll go over some basic knowledge on cancer treatments’ effects on incontinence, why it’s important to instill confidence and teach the child self-care around the subject, as well as tips on how to handle going back to school. 

Background Knowledge on Why A Child With Cancer May Be Struggling With Incontinence 

Many children who are battling cancer struggle with incontinence, and this can be for a variety of reasons. Stress incontinence can happen when a child laughs, coughs, sneezes, or exercises. Although this form of incontinence can be mild to severe, it can still affect the child’s ability to play with other children without having an accident. Surgery, radiation, and certain medication the child may be on can also lead to types of incontinence such as overflow or continuous incontinence. Anxiety is known to have issues with bladder control in children, and kids who are battling cancer are faced with a lot more stressors than the average child. Whatever the reason may be, your child is doing their best, and there are things that we can do to make the transition back to school as painless as possible. 

How to Instill Confidence and Practice Self-Care With a Child 

It’s important that as a parent you talk to your child about the issues that may arise when they go back to school. There may be a plethora of things that will be different for them than the other kids their age. When discussing such matters, there are some things that one should focus on. 

• Start by having an open dialogue in which you discuss, in an age-appropriate fashion, what difficulties may arise. 
• Always stay positive and make it clear that you appreciate their effort to control their bladder, being clear with them that you know it may be out of their physical control. 
• Go over your plan of action with your child, teaching them where they’ll keep their extra pair of pants and leakproof underwear. With leakproof underwear such as the boy-briefs from Tony & Ava, most likely they’ll be able to avoid stains, odors, and wetness. However, it may ease their minds to know that they have extra in case they need them. 
• Allow your child to wear Tony & Ava leakproof underwear before school starts so that they can feel confident they won’t have an unnecessarily messy accident.

Tips For Going Back To School 

If your child is young enough where they don’t fully comprehend what’s happening you should look into buying underwear that is leakproof and absorbent. This helps them to live their lives as similar to the other kids as is physically possible because they don’t keep having to change their clothes and getting cleaned up. The hypoallergenic, sweat-wicking material that Ava & Tony’s underwear is made from allows our kiddos to run freely and comfortably without having to constantly change their underwear and pants. 

If you have an older child, especially one that is past the potty training age, there are social stigmas that come along with having incontinence at school. Buying them underwear that is absorbent and keeps them free of stains is important to their peace of mind. The underwear that Tony & Ava makes is ultra-absorbent along with being snug and slim. This is important because the last thing your child wants is to have a bulky diaper that shows through their pants. The design is unobtrusive but more importantly, the charcoal layer fights any odors associated with the accident, and the bamboo and the sweat-wicking fabric are comfortable. 

Talking to your child about what they’re wearing and why it works to protect against accidents, that way they can go into the school year feeling confident and secure. We all want our children to have the same wonderful school experience as the other kids, and with Tony & Ava’s leakproof ultra-absorbent underwear they can. Battling cancer is an incredibly trying experience for a child, and incontinence is just one of the many unfair circumstances they’ll have to face, but finding absorbent underwear that can minimize the drama of accidents can help. They are also comfortable, breathable, and hypoallergenic so that your child can be as relaxed and happy as possible.