Helping Children Understand Cancer adapted from “Cancer Care Briefs” When someone has cancer, it affects the entire family, particularly children. Cancer is a complicateddisease to understand, even for adults. There are many types of cancers and no easy way to describethem in simple terms. But if you, your child, or someone in your family has cancer, discussing it withyour children may be the most important thing you can do. Protecting Children Can Make Things Worse When cancer strikes a family, children sense that something is wrong, even if they don’t know what it is.Talking it over with them, in words they can understand, is always better than hiding it. If you keepthings from them, children think that things are worse than they really are. For example, it is not uncommon for young children to think their actions somehow caused a parent orsibling to get cancer. It is important to not only communicate with your children, but to listen to them,and make sure they understand what is happening. No matter what their age, there are ways to commu-nicate with children about cancer, treatment, and, if necessary, life and death.