Sharing the News with Kids

We had the talk with Carter this morning that we have been putting off. It is hard to tell a five-year old that his sister has cancer. He obviously knows there is something going on and he is hearing and seeing so much we couldn't hold off any longer.

Essentially this is what we told him.....

"You know how your body is made up of millions of tiny cells? (we studied this recently), well Julia had some bad cells in her belly. They grew into a bad lump called cancer. The doctors took out the lump when they fixed her belly last week. Now Julia has to have a special treatment called chemo. Chemo is a very strong type of medicine that you get in the hospital. It goes through her body to look for any little cancer cells that might be left. When it finds them it smooshes them (he was upset when we said 'kill' because we don't use that word in our house). Julia will get chemo at the hospital in her port. She'll have to make lots of trips to the hospital for treatment. This is why the grownups are sad sometimes because Julia will have to spend a lot of time at the hospital."

That was all the information we gave for now. We'll let him process this for awhile before adding any more. We will also hold off on chemo side effects until we see what hers actually are going to be. We will now try and work all this into regular conversation to gauge his understand and have him play doctor with her to see what questions he might have. He did well with everything we told him. We could tell he was starting to understand more and wanted to be sure he had an idea of what was going on.

When talking to your own kids some things to remember....

• only tell them what they need to know
• it's better to have multiple conversations instead of just one
• think about how they are/might be affected and address those questions
• keep it age appropriate- kids under 3, probably don't need much information at all
  
• use the words "cancer, chemo, and hospital" instead of "sick, medicine, and doctor" so that they realize this is different than what they or their family experience
• She is not 'sick'. She does not have 'germs'. And you can't catch cancer from somebody else. It is something that was inside her body.
  
• If they want to see her incision or port please ask- she is happy to show them (her port is like a balloon under her skin where the doctors put her chemo so it doesn't have to hurt)
  
• hold off on discussing side effects of chemo until they are a reality, they don't need any 'what-ifs' or 'might be'

Hope this helps. Please keep Carter in your prayers as he navigates these new waters. Pray that we have insight into his state of mind. He's very reluctant to express emotion and share his feelings. he is definitely an internal processor. We want to be sure we are meeting his needs through all of this.