When someone has cancer, it affects the entire family, particularly children.
Cancer is a complicated disease to understand, even for adults.
There are many types of cancers and no easy way to describe them in simple terms. But if you, your child, or someone in your family has cancer, discussing it with your 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 keep things from them, children think that things are worse than they really are.