Lily Wong-Kisiel, M.D., has helped hundreds of children and their families manage life with epilepsy. She knows how challenging it can be to safeguard health while letting a kid be a kid.
Watch and learn what Dr. Wong-Kisiel tells her Mayo Clinic patients about striking a healthy balance between preventing seizures while allowing for some scrapes.
We asked a Mayo Clinic expert: How can parents normalize life with epilepsy for kids?
Lily Wong-Kisiel, M.D., Pediatric Neurology: I can think of an example of a friend, and I'm putting on my mommy hat right now, of a child who has a lot of allergies. What she told me is, "I don't think about what my kid cannot have. I think about what he can have." So, for a child to have epilepsy, how do we integrate a young child to be doing all the things that a kid would want to do or should be doing safely?
With seizures, the concerns are the accidents when you're unable to respond during a seizure, whether it's five seconds, 10 seconds, to a couple minutes.
You can be protective and encourage an active childhood
With well-controlled seizures, being compliant on medication, I think some of these activities that are typical for normal kids, riding bikes with helmets on, you might get scrapes here and there with or without seizure, going to sleepovers. I think all of these activities can be safely done.
Epilepsy doesn't have to define childhood
Parents and care providers want to be protective, but there are certain risks that we all take every minute of our life. Think about not so much what the kid cannot do, but how do we open up the door safely so that they can do all of these things?
Dr. Wong-Kisiel has helped hundreds of children and their families manage life with epilepsy.
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