- Serious scenarios
When a parent is very sick, or a relative gets cancer, it feels near impossible to put the burden of that knowledge on a child.
The amount of information, and how detailed you get about the situation should depend on the age of the child.
You can start with simple descriptions, like “Grandma is sick and we don’t know if she will get better, so we need to give her extra hugs.”
For an adolescent, you can try something more like, “Grandma has cancer that is attacking her body, but she is getting very good care, and we will be here to answer any questions you have along the way.”
It is natural for children to be curious about the world around them, but they won’t naturally learn the answers to those curiosities.
Information is coming into our children from many sources, school, peers, media, television, and movies.
Parents need to be the ones to instill a moral and logical approach to life’s hardest topics. It is our duty and privilege to be the one our children learn from, in an honest and genuine way.
Please let us know what you consider a talk you shouldn’t keep from your children, or any approaches you have found effective.