- Children Diagnosed With Cancer: Dealing With Diagnosis
- When a child has cancer, it’s a crisis for the whole family.
- How do parents usually react to a child’s cancer diagnosis?
- Ways to improve coping
- How can parents be sure their child will get the best treatment?
- What if parents want a second opinion?
- How do children with cancer and their siblings react to a cancer diagnosis?
- What helps kids with cancer and their brothers and sisters?
- Keeping up with schoolwork during a child’s illness
- Will the child and family ever return to normal after a cancer diagnosis?
- To learn more
Children Diagnosed With Cancer: Dealing With Diagnosis
When a child or teen is diagnosed with cancer, families and parents will need to know about and cope with many problems. This document, which offers ideas for coping and moving forward after diagnosis, is one in a series of documents for parents and loved ones of a child with cancer. The other documents have information about returning to school, understanding the health care system, dealing with the late effects of treatment, and financial and insurance issues.
There are many kinds of families today. Single-parent families and blended families are common. There also might be trusted adults other than parents who are involved in the daily lives of children. These adults are often very important to children, serving in parent and caregiver roles. A trusted adult who is involved in the daily life of the child with cancer (or the child’s siblings) can be greatly affected by the child’s cancer, too, and may be key to the family’s coping with it. When we use the word parent, it may also refer to one of these caregivers.
Last Medical Review: 06/29/2012
Last Revised: 06/29/2012