June 14, 2023

Telling Your Kid You Have Cancer

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I have yet to figure out how Wendy S. Harpham, MD, FACP manages her life as a doctor, cancer patient, author, and mom of three kids. She’s a super warm, kind person too.

In the parenting section of my book Everything Changes, I recommend her award-winning book When a Parent has Cancer: A Guide to Caring for Your Children which comes with the kid’s book Becky and the Worry Cup. (She’s the author of many other books too including The Hope Tree.) I asked Wendy to guest on my blog today about talking to kids about your cancer:

“My children were 1, 3, and 5 years old when I was first diagnosed with lymphoma. I’ve been in and out of treatment ever since. Since I didn’t get well (and I didn’t die), I was stuck dealing with the double challenges of kids and cancer. Here are my top two tips for raising healthy children When a Parent has Cancer:

1) Establish and maintain open lines of communication. Studies confirm that even when parents try to keep their illness a secret, children know something is wrong. And the fact of the matter is this: Children WILL draw conclusions based on what they are seeing and hearing, and what they know.

Open lines of communication create opportunities every day for adults to guide children toward accurate, yet healthy and hopeful interpretations of the events, and toward adaptive coping skills.

2) Always tell the truth, couched in love, hope and support. Sons and daughters need to be able to believe their parents in order to grow up into adults who, in turn, can trust others. With the added stress and uncertainty of illness, being unfailingly honest gives children buoys of assurance in a sea of uncertainty.

Whether parents mean to or not (and whether they believe it or not), to lie to children is to say, “Dear, I don’t think you can handle the truth.” Conversely, by telling the truth, parents send children a powerful message, “I respect you. I believe you can handle my illness. You can handle the truth.’” What better way to build a child’s self-esteem?

The greatest gift we can give our children is not protection from the world, but the confidence and tools to cope and grow with all that life has to offer.”

How long did you wait between when you were diagnosed and when you told your kid? Do you think your kids knew something was up? How did you explain it to them? Did you brainstorm much about what you would say, or did you kind of wing it? How did the conversation go?

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