Talking to Kids About Cancer: Be Open as Much as You Can

Discussing a cancer diagnosis with children can be really complicated. You want to be honest with them and you want them to be prepared for what might happen, but at the same time you want to protect them, and be as gentle as possible. John Duberstein, who lost his wife Nina to cancer, explains that he and his wife tried to take a progressive approach – and be as open with their kids as possible. But as honest as they were, they ran into some issues with their kids understanding the disease. When Nina started to look healthier, for example, the kids assumed she was getting better … but that wasn’t the case.

“It was a real eye-opening moment for two people who felt like they were dealing really head-on with this stuff, talking to the kids,” John says. “So I think it’s important to be open with the kids as much as you can, as much as you feel like they can handle. But it’s also important to revisit it and not make assumptions … At the end of the night, what Nina had to tell them was, ‘I’m not ever going to get better. My cancer is not ever going to go away,’ it was hard for them to hear even though they’d already been prepared.”