Hobby House
I’d like to welcome you to the Hobby House. The Hobby House is the craft station located in hospital pediatric oncology waiting room that can introduce parents to new hobbies and crafts while they are waiting to be called in to their child’s remission appointments. Remission appointments work like check ups, but they happen every month before stretching out.
Project Type
Semester long individual project
Research, Modeling, Rendering
Prompt
Capstone exploration
Skills
Life changes when your child is diagnosed with cancer.
All of a sudden you aren’t worrying about scraped knees at the park,
or if they are being picky about their veggies.
You’re worried about everything you have to do to ensure the health
and safety of your child, no matter what it takes.
Understandably, your child becomes an even bigger center of your world.
Everything, including yourself, comes second to your child.
Even after treatment ends, it’s difficult to address your own wants and
needs. After all, you’ve spent a significant amount of time prioritizing your
child above yourself. Do you even have time to focus on yourself?
It’s pretty difficult to feel like you are able to relax and destress when you
have a sick child depending on you.
So this brings the question:
How do you reduce stress and improve the mental health in the parents of childhood cancer survivors?
Our Goal: to provide parents various easy leisure crafts to reduce their stress and improve their mental health by utilizing the spare time spent in the waiting room to introduce them to possible relaxing hobbies.
Parents are consistently going to these appointments, and the waiting room time is a consistent block of time where nothing truly happens besides waiting aka an open opportunity to provide something for parents that they don’t have to block out extra time for; its already happening at the Hobby House. All the crafts in the Hobby House are able to be used in the waiting room and are meant to be taken home.
Welcome to the Hobby House!
When the waiting room is in use, parents can situate their child in the play area and explore or grab something from the Hobby House for themselves.
They are able to approach the house and see the wall explaining how to use the Hobby House and why it is there.
Use Storyboard
They can then select the pattern of their choosing for that month’s craft. The craft changes monthly and would offer variety to parents.
And if needed, there are work stations are equipped with extra tools and assistive pegs to help them work with their craft.
Every month, Hobby House (an external company supplying this) would come and set up the craft with everything necessary, such as the signs and peg layout.
The only upkeep is from restocking it, which could be done by the janitorial staff or nurses. The extras and restocks are then stored in the underneath for easy restocking when it gets low.
Stocking
see the process
Interested in knowing more?
This capstone aims to provide a positive post treatment experience for parents of child cancer survivors.
The caregiver often isn’t focused on; after all the child is sick. But in this project, I sought to create something for their benefit, as they are so so important. The emotional weight they carry is so heavy, even after the conclusion of treatment.
Brief:
Factors Associated with Post Traumatic Growth Among Parents of Children with Cancer.
https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.4307
Post traumatic growth is the phenomena where following a highly stressful event, a period of intense thought follows where an individual tries to seek meaning in the event.
Eventually, this leads to the personal growth associated with PTG—more meaningful relationships, identification of new possibilities, increased personal strength, an increased appreciation for life.
Initial Research: Key Facts
In the year following the conclusion of treatment is when there is the most visible improvement in the health of the child survivor. The quality of life evens out two to three years following that.
Therefore this could provide a promising area of positive intervention through aligning the parent’s personal growth with the visible improvement in their child. As their child’s health improves and ‘normal’ returns, so too could theirs through a proposed means.
Factors Associated with Post Traumatic Growth Among Parents of Children with Cancer.
https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.4307
Impact of a Child’s Cancer Disease on Parent’s Everyday Life: A Longitudinal Study from Sweden
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0284186X.2016.1250945
Leisure activities buffer against stress induced negative consequences through distraction from negative life events and provision of social support, friendships, and social acceptance.
Understandably, it can be a bit difficult to perform leisure activities with an ill child.
The paper this extract is from recommends encouraging continued participation in leisure activities among other things such as social worker help in occupational issues, practical support, and problem solving as part of comprehensive psychosocial care provided to families.
By encouraging leisure activities and self care of parents with the physical recovery of their child, we can reduce stress and improve overall health.
Caretakers carry a heavy responsibility.
Watching your child suffer is an acute agony. Appointments, treatments, weeks in the hospital worrying, information overload. They undergo all of these things, and give up a lot of themselves for the sake of their child in the process.
After such a high stress time, how do you spend time on yourself after spending it all on your child? Following the conclusion of a child’s cancer treatment, there is a sense of relief and gratitude from the caretaker; however parents still struggle after months or years of prioritizing the child over themselves. By encouraging leisure activities and self care of parents with the physical recovery of their child, we can reduce stress and improve overall health.
When speaking to parents of a childhood cancer survivor (myself), I got some more insight about how leisure helped with stress and coping.
Thinking back, I picked up the guitar around the time you got sick... So in a way, although I wasn’t thinking about it like that during that time, it was how I helped myself in that way. For my stress. I played for you, and [your siblings].
Regarding maybe having a hobby
I went to Michael’s and I saw this sign for a class for [beading]. I thought it looked pretty, and so I came in the afternoon for the class. And that’s how I started my “drug” haha.
Regarding how hobby started
Yes, I feel like finding beading helped me as something for de-anxiety. I beaded a lot, and sewed, and it calmed me. I made chicken soup for you too haha. Always chicken soup.
Regarding beading as a destressor
Activities that require some time and resources to be put into them. They tend to be things that wealthier people do more because of the time and money needed to be sunken into them, such as golf or pickleball. It also covers other normal sports that can be played/done which are also done by more athletic people.
Activities that are more easily done at any time and require less time and resources. Watching TV on your couch is a form of passive leisure. You are enjoying an activity with minimal effort required.
Active Leisure
So what forms of leisure are there?
Passive Leisure
Taking the busy life parents often have into account, passive leisure would be the best option. Therefore, providing a passive, easily accessible form of leisure could provide stress relief.
Creating a passive lesiure craft spot was the goal, but initially it was a waiting room redesign. As parents live busy lives, in the time following treatment, the place that the parents are consistently visiting is the hospital waiting room. Therefore the initial concepts featured a waiting room redesign. To fit the scope better, I dialed back the size.
Concepts
Portable Hobby Station that is implemented in hospital waiting rooms. A subscription service sends boxes monthly with new small hobbies that can be taken home with parents.
Form Evolution
Final
