From surgeries to outpatient cancer treatments, there are many acute or ongoing health-related issues that our family members may encounter. For many children, a grandparent’s serious illness is their first experience with a loved one being sick. Even when these illnesses aren’t life-threatening, they can be upsetting and difficult for children to understand.
Experts agree that the best way to help your children cope with a grandparent’s illness is to be honest about the situation. Even if you don’t say anything to your child about a grandparent’s illness, your child may notice changes in grandma or grandpa’s mood, activities, and/or energy level. They may notice that they haven’t been seeing their grandparent as regularly.
If you don’t provide an explanation for a grandparent’s changes and/or absences, children are likely to make up stories to explain the situation to themselves. As social workers who specialize in caring for children have noted, the stories that children make up can be more scary than their actual family situations.
The key in telling your child about a grandparent’s illness is being honest without over-sharing. Kids don’t need—or want—to know everything about a medical situation. Young children won’t be able to understand medical details, and for a child of any age, too much information at one time can result in a feeling of overwhelm.
It’s important to respect your own feelings, too, about your parent’s illness and to find a way of talking to your child that seems right to you. When your parent is ill, you’re experiencing your own stress, anxiety, and so on. Be sure to take a quiet moment to gather your thoughts and carefully plan what you want to share with your child. Choose a time that feels right, rather than hurrying yourself to break the news. It’s OK for your child to see some emotional reaction from you as you share what’s happening; kids understand that it’s natural for you to be sad when someone you love doesn’t feel well.
Also, you don’t have to share everything within one single conversation. It sometimes takes an initial conversation to lay the groundwork (“grandpa is in the hospital”), then follow-up conversations with more details (“when we visit grandpa, he might be asleep”). It can sometimes help to describe symptoms that children will see (“grandpa has some bandages where the doctor helped his knee”) rather than using terms that children can’t understand.
You can also be specific about preparing the child for what you’re going to do, such as what a hospital visit might be like. It’s good to have a backup plan, too, in case a child feels overwhelmed by an experience. For example, bring another family member or friend with you on a hospital visit in case your child needs a break to go outside or take a walk to the cafeteria for a snack.
One of the most helpful things you can do is to help children find activities that will help them connect with their grandparent. You could help your child make a card, write a letter, draw a picture, gather flowers, or bake a treat for their grandparent. Your child might have suggestions for activities, too.
Finally, make sure that you give your child a chance to talk to you about what they are feeling. You can ask open-ended questions to encourage a child to share, without pressuring children to talk. They will bring the situation up to you when they feel like it, sometimes at unexpected times. Everyone has their own individual experiences when someone they love is ill.
