For children who have a parent with cancer
When a parent is diagnosed with a serious illness like cancer, the entire family gets shaken by the event, especially children. Explaining illness and its consequences to children is often a difficult and complex endeavor. A simple approach rarely reassures a child. It is therefore important to thematize the situation as well as the new daily routine and the specific symptoms the patient will go through.
Each situation is unique and has its own specifications
For certain cancers, such as breast, books aimed at children do exist. However, very often these books cover one specific situation and usually reflect a standard/traditional family structure: mother, father and a child. In reality, the nuclear family is not representative of many patients’ situations. The ill parent may be divorced and live alone or live with a partner of the same sex. Children of ill parents may be cared for by a grandparent, a nanny, an uncle… the family configurations of the real world are many.
Whatch and listen here the version of a family with "mother and father", where the mother has cancer: