When and how should I tell DS that his best friend has cancer? :(

[BertieBotts]

We were told this morning by the parents. Absolutely devastating news :( The boys are five and six. We haven't said anything to DS yet, but he has been asking when he will be back at school. DH reckons we should just say that his friend is sick and won't be back for a long time, but I feel like I/we need to be prepared just in case he asks. He has encountered death before (a pet and a great grandparent) but not the potential that a child could die. I'm wary of frightening him, but I also don't want to lie - I don't think that's helpful. I don't know whether the school know yet either so not sure how much to tell him in case he repeats it and the family aren't ready for a wider circle to know.

The prognosis is good, I meant to add, but they don't really know exactly how bad it is yet, so difficult to tell.

No, it isn't necessary to tell him that his friend might die!

Tell him that he is very poorly and might have to spend quite a long time in hospital and at home and that he will miss lots of school.

Anything else just doesn't feature yet.

But what if he asks? He does know that sometimes when people are very poorly they can die, but that it's different from the normal kind of poorly when you have to stay off school.

I was not planning to sit him down and explain that his friend might die, but if he asks the question, then what? Do we say no, I don't know, what?

Is he likely to ask?

If he does then of course you can't lie, but you can comfort him by saying that it is a tiny chance. No need to go in to the details about cancer. He is too young.

I wouldn't tell him. If he asks be vague or say you don't think so or something positive but non committal. My DDs friend was diagnosed with cancer 6 yrs ago and they are still going strong. I worried about telling her when we found out but glad we didn't now.

I think you might have to be creative with the answer - if he sees the other boy and says "my mummy said you might die" that would be terrible. You don't know how much the boy knows about his own illness.

Just explain he's very poorly and cross that bridge if you come to it.

He hasn't been told a lot himself, he knows he is sick and that he is having medicine to make it better, that's all. You're right, I hadn't really thought that DS might say something to him, I suppose I was thinking that he won't be able to see him for a while anyway, because of infection risks.

I don't know, I am imagining that DS might ask but you're right, perhaps he won't. In fact perhaps we can just leave it at the status quo - that we don't know when he'll be back at school because he's poorly and apparently he's enjoying getting cards, so I might get DS to make him a card but not say that it's anything particularly serious.

OK I can see I've been overthinking a bit my head is swimming with it so god knows how the family are doing. A few friends locally are trying to sort some kind of support rota and everyone seems to know what to do and I'm feeling a bit useless and don't want to put my foot in it and make things worse at a stressful time.

We told our DDs (their cousin had cancer at this age) that she had something that was trying to make her very poorly, that she had to have even stronger medicine to stop it, but that the medicine isn't very clever and it makes the person poorly as well as the cancer.

All of her friends got very used to the different phases of chemo cycles and what she could/couldn't do during them. Children are amazingly versatile.