Learning Objective #1: Recognize that children have capacity to understand illness, are eager to be part of decision making, and seek alternative means to fill their knowledge gap

Learning Objective #2: Challenge current childhood perceptions to determine whether they inhibit children’s active participation with health care and research from an individual to an institutional level

---

Despite sufficient evidence suggesting children with cancer have the capacity to understand their illness, want to be part of the decision making concerning their care and seek alternative means to fill their knowledge gap, they continue to be excluded from active participation in their own healthcare. This paper will explore how the three common discourses prevalent in paediatrics, the Apollonian child, the child as an object of the Panopticon, and the naturally developing child, limit children's active participation in health care and deem them unworthy of study in their own right. Moreover, this paper will explore the ways in which children with cancer are rendered silent by adult society from the institutional level down to the individual level; but it will also reveal how these children actively challenge adulthood's common childhood discourses.

Discussion of childhood discourses and research evidence will permit the learner to: 1) recognize that children have the capacity to understand their illness, eager to be part of decision making and seek alternative means to fill their knowledge gap; and 2) challenge their current childhood perceptions to determine whether they inhibit children's active participation with health care and research from an individual to an institutional level.