At Teach Ted we are all about helping children feel confident when facing new experiences.
For parents, Teach Ted empowers you to better manage anxiety and support your child, with information on what might happen, common areas of concern and age-appropriate explanations.
Join Ted as he learns to face new challenges with confidence
Children teach Ted about major life events such as hospital admissions and medical procedures. Using research-based learning through play techniques, our apps and story books help ease anxiety in children, provide parents/carers with practical tips and help providers deliver the best possible patient experience.
Help Ted and his best friend Lambie as they venture through new experiences, meet friendly characters who help him along the way and discover machines that go beep.
“The power of reducing my patients’ stress before a surgery changes the surgical experience for everyone – parents, staff and the doctors. Teach Ted is a wonderful initiative to make a life challenge less confronting and easier to navigate.”
Read your way to readiness
Follow Ted in our first book, Ted goes to hospital, as he meets his surgical team and gets ready to go with the help of the help of his best friend Lambie.
“I ordered Teach Ted as soon as it was available for my two year old. He has asthma so we’ve become regulars at the ER [where] Thaddeus was always a bit scared to go. We’ve added Ted goes to Hospital to our weekly bedtime story rotation. Yesterday we again found ourselves in he hospital. This time it was a different experience. Thaddeus was calm, engaged and kept trying to tell the nurses and doctors what comes next. The ER team at Sydney Children is super impressed my the big improvement he’s made in his attitude about going to the hospital!”
Did you know every year in Australia over 1.25 million kids go to hospital
Featured
Adopt-Ted
Ted is the perfect buddy for that special child in your life and money raised goes towards our research projects to improve the way children experience medical treatment.
Child’s Play
Have you ever heard of Child Life Therapists? No? Neither had we but they have a very important role in the lives of many families with sick kids.
Family Resources
Sometimes it’s hard to find the right information. To make life easier we have compiled a list of trusted health and educational sites that you can access for more information.
Colour me happy
Looking for some activities to do with the kids, and get some learning in along the way? Check out these free activities to do at home or at school. Download and print our fun colouring in posters for a fun activity while you’re out and about or need some creative quiet time at home.
What the ‘beep’?
Doctors and nurses use lots of interesting, sometimes noisy machines to look after us when we aren’t well.
This mighty little machine is a pulse oximeter. It clips on to your finger just like a peg and monitors your heart rate and the oxygen level in your blood.
TED'S CREATORS
We love Ted
Our journey to Ted is a personal one.
As the parent or carer of any child who has gone through an operation, you will know that this is a stressful time to navigate, not only for yourselves and the child, but also for other siblings and family members.
Sare’s daughter was born with a heart defect which required open heart surgery, and four years later she was back at the hospital with her son who required a more routine childhood surgery.
Sarah’s two children also spent their fair share of time in and out of hospitals (both planned and unplanned!) due to respiratory and ENT issues.
Through all of this, we found it challenging to know how to best support our kids and their responses to each visit were pretty unpredictable. We knew there had to be a solution but we couldn’t find anything suitable.
We decided to create something ourselves using our skills in storytelling, design and learning through play as well as our own experiences as parents…. and so Ted was born.
Working with medical, education and child life experts as well as families, our resources help children along with their parents and carers navigate new and stressful situations in a fun, relateable and engaging way
Sare Christensen and Sarah Cummings, the creators behind Teach Ted.