Meeting Your Family's Needs

The diagnosis of cancer will have an enormous effect on not only your child but on you and your entire family. Your lives will change. But there are ways to help yourself and your family live through the experience. Here are just a few tips to help:

• It is not unusual for parents to have a physical reaction to their child's diagnosis – it will pass over time
• Don't forget to take care of yourself with regular meals, some period of time away for physical exercise such as walks, and get enough sleep.
• An initial diagnosis will bring many emotions including shock, denial, guilt, anger, fear and helplessness. These feelings will pass, but get help from support groups, talking to family members or friends, social workers, or from a professional counselor. Don't ignore your feelings.
• Keep communication open with extended family – don't isolate yourself or your family from other people.
• Ask for help – meals, household chores, babysitting, driving kids to school or other activities can relieve you of stress.
• A range of acting-out behavior such as tantrums, or acting-in behavior, like depression, should be expected from an ill child. Help them to develop ways to cope and express their feelings.
• Talk honestly with your child.
• Show lots of affection.
• Let them talk to you about how they feel about their illness.
• Treat the sick child as normally as possible. Try not to over-indulge or over-protect your child.
• Seek professional help for behavior you don't understand.
• Encourage your child's friends to call or visit if possible.
• Encourage family gatherings so that the ill child and his siblings spend time together.
• Keep your children's routine uninterrupted when possible.
• Be open – explain to your other children about cancer and treatment. Let them accompany you and your child to the doctor, if they want.
• Listen – to your children's concerns, to your spouse's worries, to the child in treatment.
• Learn to depend on your spouse for support; share in decision making; take turns spending time with your child and in the home chores.
• Your other children will feel all that you are feeling and more – fear, concern, guilt, abandonment, sadness and anger. Make sure they feel that they can talk to you about how they feel.
• Seek out age-appropriate books that explain cancer to children; talk to them in simple terms to explain what is happening; let them visit their sibling; and give everyone a job to do so they feel needed.
• Spend time alone with your kids and show them affection
• Alert your ill child's and his siblings' teachers to the situation at home.