By Jan Hasak
Give credit where credit is due. Children are much smarter than we imagine. They watch us like hawks, absorbing our thoughts without necessarily expressing themselves. As a cancer survivor and mother of three boys, I offer tips on interacting with your children when you or a loved one has been diagnosed with cancer:
1. Be up front about the cancer. My husband informed them of my breast cancer diagnosis as soon as they got home from school.
2. Give the children lots of physical affection and tell them at least once a day that you love them. Hugs, kisses, or less embarrassing pats on the back go a long way to ease tension and worry.
3. Be with the children as much as you can. Because I was a working mother, I didn't see much of my children until I got home after a busy day. With a cancer diagnosis I had no idea how much time I had left to be with my sons. So I made sure I volunteered for every field trip possible. I missed those trips only if I had a chemo or radiation day. My employer was very sympathetic and by that point I had many vacation days built up. We also made the most of our weekends: together we watched movies, read books, bicycled around our community and played board and card games.
4. Be open to questions about the cancer and give age-appropriate answers. My youngest boy asked me if cancer was contagious. I was able to reassure him that I could not give him cancer the way I could give him a cold or stomach flu. At four, he understood me in those simple terms.
5. Laugh together. Therapeutic humor is catching, in a good kind of way. It's the one alternative therapy to which no one objects. We always laughed at our cockatiel's antics and at the two mutts we owned who howled at sirens and balked at swimming. We also got a kick out of watching Abbott and Costello classics, as well as the slapstick humor of the Three Stooges. And the movie "Patch Adams" was a huge hit with our family.
6. Ask their teachers to report to you any unusual behavior that they observe with your children. My boys didn't express much angst about my condition. Two of them acted up in school, but I attributed it to "boys-will-be-boys" antics. But one never knows.
7. If you can afford it and it is appropriate, get tested for any genetic predisposition to your cancer. At my oncologist's urging I was recently tested for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations because of the relatively young age at which I was diagnosed and because of my recurrence. I felt I owed to my children the knowledge of their propensity to inherit the genetic mutation. As I suspected, I tested negative, but I was glad to be able to reassure my boys.
8. Write letters to the children that they can open later. I wrote a letter to my three-year-old after I was diagnosed and gave it to him to read when he was 18. He loved discovering what impressed me most about him at that age, and I'm sure he was touched by the sentiment expressed.
9. Check out from the library, buy or create your own children's book about what it's like to have cancer. One mom in my support group wrote and illustrated her own personal book so that her sons would understand at their level what was happening in their mother's world.
10. Write in a journal any thoughts and musings you have about your children's emotions at the time so you have a record. They may be interested later in your thought process and share with you how your cancer diagnosis and treatment affected them.
11. Be prepared for surprises later on! I recently discovered from a radio interviewer how deeply my cancer had affected one of my sons. He was encouraged by a youth pastor to take up music as a diversion from his feelings of helplessness over my cancer. Now he is an accomplished keyboardist in a large worship band. All because of the cancer!
I'm sure many ideas can be added to this list. Be creative. And be aware that children are very perceptive, flexible and forgiving. Give credit to them for their understanding, and they will return the favor many-fold.
Give credit where credit is due. Children are much smarter than we imagine. They watch us like hawks, absorbing our thoughts without necessarily expressing themselves. As a cancer survivor and mother of three boys, I offer tips on interacting with your children when you or a loved one has been diagnosed with cancer:
1. Be up front about the cancer. My husband informed them of my breast cancer diagnosis as soon as they got home from school.
2. Give the children lots of physical affection and tell them at least once a day that you love them. Hugs, kisses, or less embarrassing pats on the back go a long way to ease tension and worry.
3. Be with the children as much as you can. Because I was a working mother, I didn't see much of my children until I got home after a busy day. With a cancer diagnosis I had no idea how much time I had left to be with my sons. So I made sure I volunteered for every field trip possible. I missed those trips only if I had a chemo or radiation day. My employer was very sympathetic and by that point I had many vacation days built up. We also made the most of our weekends: together we watched movies, read books, bicycled around our community and played board and card games.
4. Be open to questions about the cancer and give age-appropriate answers. My youngest boy asked me if cancer was contagious. I was able to reassure him that I could not give him cancer the way I could give him a cold or stomach flu. At four, he understood me in those simple terms.
5. Laugh together. Therapeutic humor is catching, in a good kind of way. It's the one alternative therapy to which no one objects. We always laughed at our cockatiel's antics and at the two mutts we owned who howled at sirens and balked at swimming. We also got a kick out of watching Abbott and Costello classics, as well as the slapstick humor of the Three Stooges. And the movie "Patch Adams" was a huge hit with our family.
6. Ask their teachers to report to you any unusual behavior that they observe with your children. My boys didn't express much angst about my condition. Two of them acted up in school, but I attributed it to "boys-will-be-boys" antics. But one never knows.
7. If you can afford it and it is appropriate, get tested for any genetic predisposition to your cancer. At my oncologist's urging I was recently tested for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations because of the relatively young age at which I was diagnosed and because of my recurrence. I felt I owed to my children the knowledge of their propensity to inherit the genetic mutation. As I suspected, I tested negative, but I was glad to be able to reassure my boys.
8. Write letters to the children that they can open later. I wrote a letter to my three-year-old after I was diagnosed and gave it to him to read when he was 18. He loved discovering what impressed me most about him at that age, and I'm sure he was touched by the sentiment expressed.
9. Check out from the library, buy or create your own children's book about what it's like to have cancer. One mom in my support group wrote and illustrated her own personal book so that her sons would understand at their level what was happening in their mother's world.
10. Write in a journal any thoughts and musings you have about your children's emotions at the time so you have a record. They may be interested later in your thought process and share with you how your cancer diagnosis and treatment affected them.
11. Be prepared for surprises later on! I recently discovered from a radio interviewer how deeply my cancer had affected one of my sons. He was encouraged by a youth pastor to take up music as a diversion from his feelings of helplessness over my cancer. Now he is an accomplished keyboardist in a large worship band. All because of the cancer!
I'm sure many ideas can be added to this list. Be creative. And be aware that children are very perceptive, flexible and forgiving. Give credit to them for their understanding, and they will return the favor many-fold.
