Telling the kids

I found this useful article about how to tell children about your cancer. It even gives terms you can use like "doctor" instead of oncologist. It was a good read with some good tips. Good luck. Sorry you are going through this. I hope this helps.

http://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-journey/talking-about-cancer/telling-children/?region=on

I got great advice from a social worker at the hospital I go to for treatment- do you have any resources like that available to you? One thing that was super helpful to me was to anticipate the kids' questions beforehand and me and my husband agree on how to answer them and just address those without waiting for them to ask. Most kids will ask: Is this contagious or will I get it, too? Are you going to die? Are you going to lose your hair? Who is going to take care of us of you are sick? I literally wrote down the script for these so I could use the words I prepared. I also wanted to try not to cry as I told them. I tried to make this first conversation relatively short. Let the information sink in, then come back to it later to see if they had questions.

I do agree that age-appropriate information is good, but I also felt like it was good to tell my kids together because then they had each other there. This is completely specific to your kids, but of course they will talk to each other, so it might be easier to share the same information with both. I did use the word cancer, but I also explained it in other words, but I figured others will be using the word cancer around them, so I wanted them to know that word.

Now, nearing the last phase of my treatment, I think the things my kids didn't completely understand were (1) How long treatment is. Especially in my case because I have had chemo, then surgery, then radiation. So you might tell them that even though you are starting your doctors appointments to get better now, it may be after Christmas (or insert date that makes sense for your treatment) before you really feel better. Also, giving them the tools to talk to other people about it was helpful. I told them which of my friends (who were also their friends' parents) I had told, which of their teachers knew and told them they could talk to them about it if they wanted. I made sure they knew it was ok to talk to their father or grandparents or other adults in the family if they didn't want to talk to me about it. But of course that they could ask me anything, anytime. One day, my younger daughter came home and I could tell she was afraid to talk to me about a friend who had told her that his mother died of breast cancer. But when she told me about it, we talked it out, I wanted them to be able to tell me what they were afraid of. I helped them with what words they could use to explain it to their friends as well. Also, things like play-dates at your home and sleepovers become more dangerous for you if you are doing chemo, you may not want to tell them all that up front, but later it is helpful to explain to them why you may not be at school or crowded events so much, etc. I also told them that naps were part of me getting better, just like anyone who is sick would need naps, I would need a lot of them, they help me heal. I think this helped when I had those days when I just needed to lay down. I established routines right away of kids taking shoes off when they came in and hand washing and sanitizing when they came in. These were ways they could help me stay healthy, they took them seriously and I think having something they could do helped. Also, when people ask what they can do to help, having them help to invite your kids over for playdates, driving them to activities, or taking them for special outings that line up with your treatments are all super helpful. Scheduling those in advance is nice, because when you feel lousy the last thing you will fee like doing is planning a playdate. Kind of like a Meal-Train, having a Kid-Train worked out before treatment was very helpful for me.

My youngest was about the age of your oldest when I told them so I provided maybe a little more detail than you need to on the treatments themselves and other details. The great thing about kids is that (1) they are resilient (2) they are mostly self-focused, which will be a blissful break from thinking about cancer during your treatments! Good luck!