How to Talk to Kids about Cancer
A social worker explains ways that parents can gently share news about their cancer diagnosis with their children
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As a social worker in a breast cancer clinic, Liz Farrell meets a lot of young mothers. Her job is to sit beside them after they’ve received a diagnosis and guide them through the next step: telling their children—a process that can be more difficult than hearing the news themselves.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, recently had to do just that. In a video released last Friday, the princess shared that she had been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing preventative chemotherapy treatment. She did not say what kind of cancer she has. Explaining her diagnosis to her three children, who are respectively 10, eight and five years old, has been challenging and taken time, she said in the video.
An estimated 20 million people around the world were diagnosed with cancer in 2022. And according to the World Health Organization, one in five people will develop some form of the disease in their lifetime. To understand how parents with cancer can best share the sobering news with their children, Scientific American spoke with Farrell, who works at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
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A transcript of the interview, edited for clarity and brevity, follows.
How long is it appropriate for a parent to wait to tell their child about a cancer diagnosis?
I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all time frame, but in general, the sooner the better. Kids are incredibly observant, and they’re going to notice that the environment has shifted and that something’s off at home. The longer they sit in the uncertainty, the…
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