Contents
People with physical and mental features cease to be invisible. Our children can see them not only on the movie screen, but also on the playground. Most likely, they will have questions, and parents will not always have the right answers. How to talk with a child about illnesses and difficult conditions?
Why is it difficult for us to talk about illness and death?
At the moment of meeting with the theme of illness and death, we have two main difficulties.
- Lack of knowledge on how to act. We do not have or have very few “correct” words, patterns of action.
- Microstress from the collapse of basic illusions that we and our loved ones are immortal, have an eternal supply of health, we can completely control our lives, in which “nothing like this can happen to us and our loved ones, because …”.
We encounter the feelings that accompany loss: shock, bargaining, anger, sadness, acceptance. Someone experiences fear, confusion, guilt, shame, helplessness in the face of fate, anger at circumstances, or even “those who let people like him in here” – we sometimes meet such stories in the news.
But also sadness, sympathy for the child and his parents
Many conflicting feelings come up at the same time. We may not even recognize them right away, but these feelings determine our behavior and how exactly we will talk to our child. If an adult who talks about illness and death is very anxious and frightened, his emotions will be transferred to the child. However, if he is able to speak maturely on difficult topics, then the conversation will be very useful for children.
Should children be shielded from difficult topics?
In any case, the child will sooner or later encounter this topic – in literature, “in the alley”, in the supermarket, on the playground, in the news. And he must somehow form his attitude and ways of coping with feelings.
If we do not support this conversation, if the topic is not raised in conversations, if it is connected with horror and avoidance, then the child will “digest” the horror and anxiety of adults alone with himself, forming some myths that are very likely to be for him harmful.
These fantasies can be a source of problems in themselves: things that were not allowed or scary to talk about at home often become a source of fears, symptoms, and even unhappiness for children.
How to talk to a child about illness?
- Use simple, understandable language without scientific terms. For example, to the question: “Why is the girl so big and sitting in a stroller?”, You can answer that the girl cannot walk on her own, but otherwise she is exactly the same as other children. You can play together, discuss something interesting.
- Talk about facts. The body of each of us is unique and can work differently. In some cases, the body may give some kind of failure, and in some cases, all of our bodies need support. What is easy for one person is difficult for another. So we reduce anxiety, and the child is not afraid to become an outcast if he discovers any of his own characteristics.
- Provide the child with tools – words for feelings. When we give children the opportunity to call a spade a spade, we set a precedent for empathy. When we give a feeling a name for verbally expressing these scary themes, we enable the brain to work in a slightly different way.
- Group conversation can be more helpfulbecause being together is one way to deal with trauma on a community level.
Why is this important?
When we face sickness and death—especially children—we often feel helpless and confused. The horror is connected with the fact that it is unfair and very sad. Helping seriously ill children, for example, by participating in a campaign , we find ourselves acting, active subjects.
As part of a charity event, teachers, schoolchildren and their parents agree and give the teacher one bouquet per class, and the money saved in this way is sent to a fund that helps terminally ill children.
The most important thing is that the child does not remain helpless in the face of something incomprehensible, which even adults are afraid to talk about.
This is how we give the child the opportunity to get out of the state of victimhood and helplessness in the face of a big universal human topic, a meeting with which it will not be possible to avoid anyway. In addition, we form the child’s ability to cope with difficulties throughout his later life and give him the tools for further self-regulation.
It is impossible to live life and avoid losses when one of our dear people is sick or dying. How we respond to this very much depends on whether we have internal tools, strategies, ways of coping with difficult experiences.
About the Developer
Maria Egorova — psychologist, lecturer at the Institute of Integrative Family Therapy, author and host of client and training programs on working with psychological trauma.