alt.support.cancer.breast - Frequently asked Questions

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What shall I tell the Children

Tim Jackson


When a parent gets cancer or any other ailment, young children are often very aware that something is wrong, although they may not know what. They may become worried, imagination may build fears far greater than the reality, and they may feel that they are in some way to blame.

If you try to conceal the problem from children "to protect them" you are not really protecting them at all, you are denying the evidence of their senses that it exists. They will know you are lying and believe that you do not trust them, indeed not involving them shows you do not in fact trust them.

On the other hand, children need security, and unloading your own fears and worries onto them can be just as damaging.

I believe that the best path is honest confident leadership. "There is a nasty monster out there and its going to attack us, but we know how to deal with it, and if we all work together we can beat it. This is what we are going to do..." Keep the children involved and up to date, let them feel that they are contributing, e.g. by helping Mummy with the things she can't do very well since her operation. Talk to them about what is going to happen, and what might happen, and answer questions honestly. If you don't know the answer don't be afraid to say so and to explain that there are doctors and experts at the hospital to help us who know far more about these things.

It may come to explaining to a child that a parent or near relative is going to die. It is a common misconception that children are afraid of death, history has shown that children adapt rapidly to the facts of their environment and much more readily accept these changes than adults do. First breaking the news is hard, but the longer put off the harder it gets. It is a lot easier to say "Mummy has got a serious illness and she will probably get better, but she might die", than to put off the news until it is a certainty. There will be tears but the longer they have to come to terms with the idea, the easier it is to accept when it eventually happens.

A Personal Story

My daughter Natasha was six when her mother Lyudmila died from metastatic BC at 48. We had told her a year before that her mum's back (spinal mets.) was not getting better, and it would go on getting worse until she died. Lyudmila spent as much time with her as she could, and as her disease progressed I took over more and more of the parental roles. For the last three months she was hardly able to be involved at all, she was asleep most of the time, so she became less and less a part of Natasha's life. The day Lyudmila finally died Natasha was perfoming on stage with her dance school, and was staying the two show nights with another dancer. After the show I met her and she asked if Mama had died. "Yes, earlier today." She cried a little. "Can we go and see her body in the morning?" "Yes, of course." I went back to her friend's house with her, and within an hour they were playing normally, and she looked up at me and said "I didn't think about Mama for ten minutes then." She didn't want to stay long with the body, she said it looked scary. A few days later we we driving and there were a few small clouds in the sky. Natasha looked up and asked me which cloud I thought Mama was living in. We discussed which she would like best, and decided it would have to be the one that looked most well-ironed. She had always been very fussy about ironing her sheets.