Many young mothers get nervos when their children in hospital fret or cry at night. This problem has been regarded as a result, at least in part, of a deficiency in nursing time and experience of child care in this age of nuclear family or dualincome family. We thought, that it would be possible to reduce their anxiety if they were trained and had personal experience getting contact with other children and nurses.
By way of acting out this idea, we invited them to participate in creative play such as “origami”(the craft of paper folding) and evaluated how it worked based on a questionnaire obtained from 50 mothers. The results indicated that they became able to take care of thier children properly according to the health condition of each child after having relationships with other children, mothers and nurses through the group play. Such experience has naturally helped the mothers to gain knowledge and skill in child care. In the present surrey, 96% of the respondents said that they were happy to be together with their children in a hospital, and all acknowledged that they had learned many things through communication with other children and mothers. We conclude that this way of learning by experience through creative play is effective in relieving the anxiety of mothers about child care in a pediatric hospital.