If your child is having surgery, a few extra steps can go a long way to calm any concerns. You may want to:
- Ask your child questions so he can talk about his feelings, and you can make sure he’s not confused about what’s going to happen.
- Be very specific about how the surgery will help, telling him things such as “you won’t get sick as much or have as many sore throats.”
- Remind him that you’ll be at the hospital the whole time.
- Talk about going to the hospital -- a good general rule is to talk 2 days ahead of time for a 2 year old, 3 days for a 3 year old, and so on.
- Tell your child that the doctor is taking just his tonsils out, nothing else, and he won’t look any different.