HOW TO TALK TO KIDS ABOUT CANCER

In her book, But Why?, blogger and podcaster Clemmie Telford set about finding the answers to her kids’ most difficult questions. Here, she shares her experience of talking to them about cancer and the advice she’s garnered

When talking to kids about any of the harder parts of life, the question is always: how much is too much? Of course, we don’t want to burden them with worries about cancer, but we do also want to normalise it. Attempting to be frank and to avoid confusion, we initially told our kids that their grandad had died because he was ‘ill’. Clearly, though, this was too vague; we came to realise that it wasn’t completely frank and it did lead to confusion. What followed was a barrage of questions from the kids, which resulted in us telling them he died of cancer. ‘REALISTIC AND MEASURED OPTIMISM IS THE TONE’ There are around a thousand new cancer cases in the UK every day. One in two people will get cancer in their…

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Red UK (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2021

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