I love Sesame Street. I still know the songs that I learned while watching it many years ago. Sesame Street teaches children much more than letters and Spanish though. After all, life isn’t always a “Ladybug Picnic”. Sesame Street has always engaged in difficult discussions, engaging children in their classic age appropriate ways. Soon, Sesame Workshop will tackle the tough topic of the death of a parent.
The show, which will air during primetime so that families can view together, is a part of the Talk, Listen, Connect project. It was originally launched to support the special needs of military families. Katie Couric will host “When Families Grieve” when it airs on April 14 at 8:00 EST (on PBS of course) The show will feature families who have lost loved ones as well as Elmo and his family discussing the death of a beloved uncle. The program will help foster communication and provide coping ideas and strategies. There will also be supporting materials available after the program through the Sesame Street website: www.sesamestreet.org/grief.
If you head to that website now, you can preview some of the show’s content. Clips are also available on www.youtube.com. The scenes are poignant as they handle a variety of the challenges that surround explaining death to a child, including the permanency of the loss.
Sesame Street Workshop also handles a serious health diagnosis in “Here For You”. The content surrounds a critically ill child but many of the emotions and learnings may also be appropriate for other families facing ill loved ones. The DVD was distributed to hospitals and pediatric care centers so you may want to check with your local facilities, child life specialists or medical social workers for more info. You can also visit the Sesame Workshop webpage at www.sesameworkshop.org/.
Who knew? Lance Armstrong and Arthur? Really? It’s brilliant, just brilliant!
The Lance Armstrong Foundation and ARTHUR have collaborated on an clever project to reach children and their grown ups. What better way to start the conversation about cancer than to do it through the story of ARTHUR and his gang? I don’t know about you but in my house, many a library book features ARTHUR.
The episode will air daily this week. There is a fantastic Family Activity Guide that accompanies this project and is available as a free download through the Lance Armstrong Foundation. This guide, “When Someone You Know Has Cancer”, is full of tips and discussion points for families. It also covers the ARTHUR story that is airing this week, featuring the lunch lady, Mrs. MacGrady, and her recent cancer diagnosis. There are tips for parenting through cancer, suggestions for games that facilitate conversation and a discussion about talking with children of different ages. The show introduces ways that children can help someone who is sick, most of which are just great ways to be a friend in general.
But the resources don’t stop there. The Lace Armstrong Foundation has also developed school curriculum to support these conversations in the classroom. What an amazing idea. We know that our schools act as a support network for our children in many different ways and this curriculum will allow teachers to talk with their students about the diagnosis of a child or adult close to them. Please click here to visit The Lance Armstrong Foundation Classroom Resources. I encourage you to also check out the links at the top of that page to see the tremendous resources available to classrooms and to families who would like to introduce these ideas to their schools.
I just don’t understand. I am trying really hard to understand but I just can’t get my head around it. I have encountered several stories in a variety of places over the last few weeks in which parents have made the choice to not inform their children about “The Diagnosis”. Now, some families do not have the choice of withholding this kind of information from their children. Awful things happen to parents sometimes, They walk out the door in the morning and they don’t come back. There is just not much choice in these situations. I’m not struggling with that scenario (at least not in regard to this topic). I am struggling with the scenario in which there is a cancer diagnosis, there is treatment occurring and there is a lot of omission, denial and mistrust. I can understand that the decision is made out of love for the children and concern for their ability to cope. But what good can come out of this particular choice? It seems that trying to make things easier would just end up making everything harder in the end.
I actually read a story recently in which the same conversation that the children learned about the parent’s diagnosis was the same conversation in which they learned they were about to say good-bye. There had been a lengthy illness and there had been time. There is never enough time in these situations but there had been time to have multiple conversations and make some beautiful memories. And there are just no “do overs” in a scenario like this. You cannot go back and try it a different way. It seems to me that everyone loses: the ill parent loses the ability to talk honestly with his children, say what needs to be said and receive comfort in the sweet ways that only a child can give it. The well parent loses all of these and could be left holding the bag with children that have not been given time to process or grieve. And the children? They may lose a parent, a significant amount of trust and an opportunity to help and heal with their family.
I know that breaking the news about a cancer diagnosis is tough for anyone, particularly a child. But I have to believe that our children deserve the truth. It has to be delivered in age appropriate ways and with plenty of honesty and room for questions and emotion. A cancer diagnosis is given to one person but it happens to the whole family. How else can you all hold hands and help each other be brave if everyone isn’t allowed to participate in their own way?
What was your experience with talking to your children about a cancer diagnosis in the family? Did you consider not telling them?
I am very interested in how parents talk to their children about a cancer diagnosis. In our house, our son was a bit over two years old and so we chose the words “sick” and “owies”.
It was my pleasure to speak to Julie Larson of CancerCare last week and we discussed this whole topic at length. She made perfect sense when she made the comment that children really don’t fear the word “cancer”. As parents, we choose not to use this word in talking with our kids because we think we are sparing them additional worry. But it isn’t any different than any other word to them. They don’t attach worry, grief or any other adult context to it…unless they see us emtionally respond to it in these ways.
And I hadn’t thought of it before but now I realize that by not using the real word “cancer”, we might actually be making it worse on our chldren. They could hear the word used later and think this is a new diagnosis, event or situation. It could cause our children to wonder what other information we might be withholding. And all that just because we are scared of one little six letter word. If he had been older, my chosen word “sick” might have connected the disease affecting his Daddy with the stuffy nose that affected our son. We all know that cancer is not contagious and certianly wasn’t caused by my son’s lack of hand washing skills or falure to keep his finger out of his nose.
God willing, I hope that I do not have to have this diagnosis conversation with our son, now four years old, ever again. But if I have to go down that road with him this time I will use the word “cancer”. And just like always, we will all hold hands and help each other be brave.
I always suspected that we adults don’t give the children in our lives enough credit. I just stumbled upon an article that seems to confirm it. A NCI Cancer Bulletin from 2006 describes a few of the findings from a small study of women with breast cancer and their children. It indicated that while we adults are figuring out what to say about a cancer diagnosis or when to say it, our children (ages 6-8 in this study) are already on to us They suspect something is wrong before the adults in their lives confirm it. And then it seems, that we stop short before completely fulfilling their need for information. No surprise, either, that the adverse effects of cancer treatments are not lost on our children even when we’re trying hard to pretend that they don’t notice.
Check out the link about for more details and also visit www.cancer.gov for excellent tips, talking points and resources for your older children.
Last Friday, it was my pleasure to speak with Sarah Blumenfield of Camp Kesem. This camp is free of charge for children in families with a parent affected by cancer. They expect to serve 1,000 children in 22 camps this summer. Those numbers just astound me. 1,000 kids who get to run, play and sing camp songs this summer. 1,000 kids who get to hang out with other kids who know exactly how it feels to have a bald mommy, how it feels to live with the “c” word, how it feels to worry about losing a parent.
Speaking of parents, Camp Kesem provides a peace of mind for them too. imagine sending your child off to sleep-away camp and having him come home with new friends that wil be able to support and reassure like no one else, no matter what.
Hats off to you, Camp Kesem! May your “magic” continue for many more years.