When to tell kids about parent's cancer

[Areyouactuallykiddingme2812]

Hi everyone

My husband and I separated 6 months ago and I moved out with my 7 year old. We split due to his issues with alcohol and the last 6 months have been far from easy.

He's just been diagnosed with stage 3 cancer in his kidney and surrounding lymph nodes. The hospital seem relatively optimistic that removing the kidney will get rid of it all as its contained within the kidney cavity.

My question is how and when to tell our daughter. She knows he's been in hospital because he was sick and needed medicine to rehydrate him etc, all of which was true at the time.

My husband thinks we should wait until he's had the op as he may not need chemo and he thinks we can avoid mentioning cancer at all.

I think we can't hide an operation from her and it would be best to tell her the truth at an age appropriate level. I'm worried that if she finds out later that we kept it from her, that it will just make everything worse and if he does need chemo, there's no way we could keep that from her.

Does anyone have any experience of either telling or not telling kids about a cancer diagnosis and which do you think is the best approach from the child's point of view

Thanks in advance

Over the years I've worked with several children whose parents have been diagnosed with other cancer. What I've noticed is the children who handle it best have had parents who are incredibly honest with them the children who have struggled most have had parents who have tried to protect them and not told the children why the parent is visiting hospital, for example.

I would say tell her everything in an age appropriate and explain as much as you can. I totally understand why your ex is thinking the way he is, but from my experience it's not the best approach.

Thank you!

I understand why he doesn't want to tell her but I also think its partly his own fear (which is completely understandable!)

I just think she's going to know something is wrong and will worry anyway. It's been a tough 6 months for her but she's handled it incredibly well and I've been as honest as is appropriate with her. I don't want to jeopardise the trust she has in me by keeping something so important from her and I also know that she processes things well as long as I take the time to explain properly and give her the chance to ask me questions and tell me how she's feeling.

I would always be truthful, but in an age appropriate way. So dad has a lump in his kidney. The doctors will take it out and then decide if he needs any more treatment.

If she asks a question answer it truthfully, but don't rush to tell her everything.

I have recently had a cancer diagnosis and been open and honest with my kids. The older boys are 13 & 16 so have been quite truthful with them. My littlest is only 5 however so I have simply told him that I am a bit poorly and needed some treatment to make it better. I had surgery which involved a 4 days stay and he was quite anxious but is now very blasé about the need for further treatment. The cancer centre I am under offer support telling young children, including a special book and teddies etc to make it simple, may be worth asking what support or help the hospital/Maggies/MacMillan can offer you all.

I completely believe being (appropriately) honest helps children deal with it.

I was in a similar situation last year - DP diagnosed with kidney cancer. Not his son but my son lives in the same house. As surgery was going to hopefully be all that's needed we didn't use the c word. Just that DPA's kidney stopped working so getting taken out. We didn't see the point of scaring him. He's 10.
However he's needed chemo this year for a separate cancer so we were upfront about that as the side effects would need more of an explanation.
Wishing you all the best

It's his medical condition, so I think his wishes carry the most weight.

Has he told you what he proposes to say about the operation?

There is something to be said for waiting until a full treatment plan is in place, because dealing with the uncertainties of early investigations/initial treatment before the full picture is known is one of the very hardest times. And you can spare DC that, by taking a phased approach

It's much easier to process 'It's cancer, and this is what they're doing about it' than 'it's cancer and I still don't know what'll happen'

I have cancer and I would just say about the operation at this stage, not use the c word, and then see if chemo is needed. In my type of cancer they seem to often only add chemo in after surgery and tell you then after saying before you won't need it and lymph nodes was given as my reason. My son found it very difficult to hear I needed chemo after initially being told would not and I regret telling him at the start though that is the advice but I think when they say honest, its very much a I have cancer but will be fine "honest" which often isn't honest if your diagnosis is bad. A stage 3 kidney cancer is about 50% 5 year survival.

It will also be incredibly difficult for your ex dealing with cancer alone and I would imagine he just wants to get through the operation and recover and not worry your 7 year old worrying about him or have to deal with 10 million 7 year old questions. Its best to know whole treatment plan.

My dad had bladder cancer when ds was 4, we told ds that grandad had a gremlin on his bladder that was being naughty & that the doctors needed to do an operation to catch the gremlin & take it away. Ds accepted everything, he knew that grandad had a bag to collect his wee so that the doctors could make sure that the gremlin had gone & that he wouldn't be able to run around with him for a couple of weeks. He was very good & sat with grandad looking at books & talking about his passion, buses. We had warned his nursery that grandad was poorly & they spoke to him in an age appropriate way about it, he even managed to do a show & tell at nursery all about grandad's gremlin.

Thank you, we're not going to rush into anything, I was just concerned at the tell her nothing approach as I don't think its helpful

I'm so sorry about your diagnosis and hope your treatment is going well!

I think at 5 I would have been happier telling her less (although not lying) but being a couple of years older she has gotten a lot more suspicious. Just last night she commented that he still looked ill and asked why the medicine he got hadn't made him better since he was out of hospital. Since we haven't had the treatment plan yet or decided together what to say, I told her that not being sick enough to be in the hospital isn't the same as being all better and Daddy still needs time and she still needs to be gentle with him. She accepted that at face value but I could see her watching him suspiciously for the rest of the evening so she's already not believing us :(

I hope your partner's treatment is going well

It's the potential for chemo that's really putting me off not being honest with her. We should have the treatment plan next week and will take it from there

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't agree his opinion carries more weight than mine. We are both her parents and need to make a joint decision and while its him going through the hell of cancer, its me that she lives with full time so it will be that gets asked the most questions and me who would therefore have to lie to more often. She has had a really tough 6 months with us splitting over him relapsing with alcohol and I've worked really hard to keep an honest (at an appropriate level) and open dialogue with her to make sure she's ok. If she finds out down the line that I have lied to her, I really think it would do enormous damage.

He hasn't proposed what to tell her

I wouldn't be rushing in or telling her too much. The treatment plan should be available next week so once we know what they are proposing, my thoughts were to let my husband digest it then sit her down and explain that the doctors think Daddy has been so sick because he has cancer in his kidney but that he's lucky that we have 2 kidneys so they are able to give him an operation to take the affected one out and that they might want to give him some chemo afterwards to be on the safe side

She knows what cancer is and she knows chemo makes your hair fall out - to the point when my uncle shaved his head due to balding, she asked quite openly if he had cancer.

I'm not going to do anything though without a) my husband agreeing and b) speaking to McMillan about best way to approach the conversation

I'm so sorry you've been through this and hope your cancer has responded well to the chemo.

She's not the type of child who won't ask a million questions regardless and I'm really worried that lying to her won't help anything. She will also worry regardless. She's already worried that he isn't "all better" after being in hospital and is already watching him like a hawk.

Even if the treatment plan doesn't mention chemo, the doctor at the hospital has already said its a possibility and my thought would be to explain that they might want to give him it anyway just to be sure, then if they don't give him it that would be a bonus. I just think telling her he's going for an op to make him better, then potentially having to tell her later that its cancer and he needs chemo would be more upsetting and scary for her and that she wouldn't trust anything else we told her after that

I think if she was that age I would be happy to be a bit more vague and not mention cancer, but at 7 she just doesn't accept things at face value. There are always a million questions and a suspicious look on her face if she thinks we're not telling her everything. She's 7 going on 17!

Once we have decided what to tell her I'm going to speak to her teacher as unless they more very quickly, she will be back at school before his op

I have been through this with my husband. Tell her stage by stage, she doesn't need to know anything at all until she needs to know it. Firstly she needs to know he's having an operation and will have a kidney removed, we have 2 kidney's so he will be ok with just one. Then, if there's no further treatment I feel very strongly she doesn't need any more information. Daddy had his kidney removed as it wasn't working properly will be all she needs to know.

If he needs chemo then the next step is that Daddy had his kidney taken out and it HAD cancer in it, so he's going to have some medicine to make sure it isn't going to come back and might make him feel poorly.

When she asks if he will be ok, the answer is that we expect him to be and reassure her that if there's anything she needs to worry about you'll let her know.

Bear in mind too that there are many chemos where you don't lose your hair. I also have a feeling that they use targeted drugs and immunotherapy rather than chemo for kidney cancer now and they have far less side effects and don't make you lose your hair so she might not notice too much. Hope it goes ok.

Yes from what I've read up on due to my dp's kidney cancer chemo isn't used as much and it's the other therapies you mentioned. But that's only if it's stage 4. Stage 1-3 is surgery only.
I can highly recommend the Kidney Cancer UK Support Group on Facebook. It's a private group run by the charity and has so much information. It helped me feel less alone as well hearing from other people and their partners who were going through the same thing.

When you tell her, make sure she knows it’s just one of those things and nothing to do with the separation. Kids can be prone to magical thinking plus egocentrism, which makes them think things are their fault that can’t possibly be.

So she might think ‘me and Mum left dad, he’s very sick now, it’s my fault’. I was quite seriously ill when I was her age and definitely thought I’d caused it.

We've gone through this and would also recommend being open and transparent about what is happening, in an age appropriate way.

Kids pick up on tensions, odd phonecalls, unexpected visits and have bat ears for what we don't want them to hear out if context.

Even if the treatment plan doesn't mention chemo, the doctor at the hospital has already said its a possibility and my thought would be to explain that they might want to give him it anyway just to be sure, then if they don't give him it that would be a bonus. I just think telling her he's going for an op to make him better, then potentially having to tell her later that its cancer and he needs chemo would be more upsetting and scary for her and that she wouldn't trust anything else we told her after that

I have to be honest I don’t agree with you. I feel quite strongly it’s a need to know basis. In my opinion, and my youngest was the same age as your DD when my husband was ill. To tell her that he might need chemo and hopefully finding out he doesn’t is much more confusing than telling her if and when the time comes.

children might ask questions but actually they have limited ability to process that information and I really wouldn’t go down the route of “might” when things aren’t concrete. It’s not a risk in my opinion that she wont trust you, I think you run the risk of scaring her for no reason if you tell her something which might not happen

obviously this is my personal opinion but I kept it extremely simple with my youngest, and he processed and managed the whole thing well

Well my husband told his friend and neighbour who has kindly (?!?!) told half their street. One neighbour who he barely knows came up and hugged him in the street and said he was so sorry to hear about his cancer! Luckily my daughter wasn't there, but we only live 2 streets away and its a small community within a large town - everyone knows everything about everyone. My daughter is friends with with the neighbours daughter so I think we now have no choice in telling her before she hears it from someone else as gossip.

I had her away on a pre-booked trip for the weekend so have avoided seeing anyone, but my husband hasn't received his treatment plan so now agonising over waiting until we have something concrete that we can start to explain but that risks her picking up the gossip first.

I'm absolutely furious.