Admitting your child to the hospital is one of the scariest things a parent can go through, not only because it means their child is seriously ill, but because it can feel like a hospital is robbing their baby of their childhood.
Construction site foreman Jason Haney knows first-hand what it’s like to have to leave your child in a hospital and how scary it can be for them, and is now trying to make each day a little brighter for sick kids in the Memorial Children’s Hospital in South Bend, Indiana.
Over the winter, Jason brought a blow-up snowman to the construction site he was working on, which sits right across the street from the children’s hospital so the kids had something nice to look at. “One of his co-workers made the comment ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we did something like Where’s Waldo?’,” Beacon Health System spokeswoman Heidi Prescott explained.
Jason loved the idea and got to work making an 8-foot-tall cut out of Waldo, and started hiding it around the construction site each day in a new location. “It didn’t take long to catch on, the kids whether they are in the rooms or in a play area, they look across as soon as they get to the window. They will look all over the building, point and exclaim ‘I found him!’,” said Prescott, who also explained how it helps the kids forget that they’re in the hospital for a few minutes each day.
When Jason’s now teenage daughter was just 3-year-old, she spent time in a children’s hospital, and he knows how stressful and scary it can be for both parent and child, and just wants to put a smile on everyone face during a tough time. “He’s eight-feet tall and a pain in the butt to move around sometimes,” Jason said. “He’s 50, 60 pounds and he’s awkward to carry. But it’s worth it for the kids.”
“My son was in the hospital in May after a bicycle accident. Waldo gave him something to look for outside of his room. Thank you so much for helping our hospital stay go a little better!” one patient’s mother wrote to Jason on his Facebook group.
To see more of Waldo’s hiding places, check out the Where’s Waldo.. Memorial Children’s Hospital Facebook page.
Can you believe what this construction worker does every single day for kids in the hospital? Let us know what you think in the comments below, and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: Facebook/Where’s Waldo.. Memorial Children’s Hospital]
Construction Worker Plays ‘Where’s Waldo’ With Sick Kids In The Hospital is an article from: LifeDaily