How Do I Help My Seven Year Old Navigate Their Cancer Treatment?

Here is a parent asking how do we talk to a 7-year-old about cancer treatment? And also, how do I help my 7-year-old navigate not being able to see her friends during chemo? Uh, first of all, as a, to the parent, um, I mean my heart, right? I mean, I mean, I had a daughter who had a brain tumor. I can relate in a very profound way with what you're saying. Um, your child probably won't understand the term cancer, might understand the language of sick or illness and might understand it for a period of time. That illness is gonna make it so you can't see your friends. But, but I would talk with your child's parents, your friend's parents, and create a situation where they could zoom much like we are tonight. So your child has a chance to talk with their friends. Um, obviously we have, you'd have to be careful after that for, for contact. So that makes sense. But I still think it would be very valuable, uh, if they could write, if their friends could write cards, if, if people could reach out. I think that those things and, and really might use terms like sick or an illness that, that needs to be taken care of. Um, I would also reach out to many hospitals, especially those who specialize in treating cancer, have a social worker and they can help you with the language of how to communicate to their child. So I would probably reach out to the place where the surgery's going to be asked for the onsite social worker, which most of them have, and, and get some insight there. I think that, um, they can provide you as additional guidance in how to communicate with your child and, and prepare your child for the sur uh, for the cancer treatment. So that would be, that would be my approach. Uh, get friends involved and, and your, your child's friend's parents involved. And then I would talk with the social worker at the hospital and, and in preparation. And they many, uh, institutions have that, that's at least what we experienced. We had a social worker come to, uh, our, um, our room at the hospital and talk with us and, uh, give us some preparation for that. So I would, I would, uh, again, I would ask those questions.