The family is the primary source of care for a chronically ill child, and it is the parents who must manage the child's illness on a daily basis. This qualitative study was undertaken to investigate the ways in which 10 two-parent families of children with juvenile arthritis experience their child's illness. In this paper the theme of coming to terms with the management of the illness and what it entails for the parents is examined. The data provide evidence of how the parents learn, and their efforts and experience of learning to care for the child on a daily basis. This is a complex process and includes the different phases the parents experience as they move through the learning process. The findings suggest that the parents learn the child's care and make adjustments to the demands of managing the child's illness in a way that works best for them.

This paper will address children's pain vocabulary, that is, the self-reported words provided by the children, in a descriptive study carried out to examine how a group of school-age children view their pain. This was an initial step to demonstrate that children can describe pain and do possess a pain vocabulary. Our aim was to determine the feasibility of achieving a meaningful grouping of children's pain words and the pain intensity implied by the words. A sample of 40 school-age children were the subjects for this study. All the pain word descriptors used by the children in response to the question 'Can you think of words to describe what pain feels like?' were categorized on the basis of the Melzack classification.

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A qualitative study examined parents' experiences of coming to terms with and becoming effective managers of their children's asthma. Grounded theory technique (Strauss & Corbin, 1991) was used to examine the parents' stories. Through this technique, in-depth interviews were conducted with 39 parents and these participants unraveled the process of accommodating their children's severe asthma. The basic social process was one of gaining control. Participants experienced three phases: being out of control, which meant seeking help, "running around," and trying to make sense of the situation; being involved, which meant searching out, trying out new ways and means, and making changes; and being in control, which they described as being able to take charge, make alliances, and become competent in coping with their child's illness. Participants' experiences provide testimony to interventions that nurses can use to help parents through the process of successful asthma management.

How can we prepare nurses who will have as their focus of practice, the health of the family unit? This paper describes the learning outcomes which were generated from a short term experience in a curriculum where the major thrust is learning to nurse families in a health promoting way. Students were provided with experience with families who were undergoing an important family event, e.g., coping with the short term hospitalization of a child. An exploration and analysis of these experiences revealed for students the content of nursing families who are in the process of dealing with this particular event of family living. This content related to the acquisition of nursing skills of an interpersonal, technical and decision-making nature as well as the development of knowledge which provides the basis for nursing the family as the unit of care.