Supporting your child

A child with psoriasis needs support from family and friends. Support can take many forms, from being able to listen to the child’s feelings to simple, common acts of friendship. You may need to remind your child periodically to ask for support or others won’t know that it’s needed.

Education 

Explain to your child that the more people know about psoriasis, the better. Allow the child to practice telling you about his or her disease as if you were a teacher, a new friend or a stranger. Help your child find ways to communicate that psoriasis is not contagious, self-inflicted or mystical. Remind them that it is a medical condition in which the skin cells grow too rapidly and build up on the surface of the skin.

Connecting to others

Connecting to other children with psoriasis will help your child realize he or she is not alone. It can be helpful to share stories and treatment tips with someone who knows what it’s like to live with psoriasis. Encourage your child to create a support system. This could include teachers, coaches, friends, youth group leaders and other people who care about your child.

Selecting a doctor

Finding the right physician and other health care providers and developing a good relationship with them is critical. Managing your child’s psoriasis is a long-term team effort. Educated treatment decisions will grow increasingly important as your child gets older. Involving your child in those decisions is essential in carrying out an effective treatment plan. 

Treatment plans

Actively involving children in their treatment gives them a certain amount of control over their disease. However, treatment can create frustration and stress. It requires a commitment of time by the young person and causes varying degrees of discomfort. Repeated treatments that produce minimal results can cause anger and a feeling that there is too much focus on the disease at the expense of other things. Over time, treatment can become a difficult, resented task, particularly if a treatment becomes ineffective and the disease reasserts itself.

To make treatment easier, experts advise setting up a “treatment center” in the home where all medicines and creams are kept. Generally, children over 6 or 7 years old may be able to apply moisturizing lotions and topical creams on their own. Children under 6 may not want creams applied. Play games with a young child’s treatments. Try applying creams as “dots” and then connecting the dots, or drawing pictures with the ointments and the “erasing” them with your hands. As children age, make treatment a timed event and try to break the last record for “least time needed” to apply a treatment.