How to Talk to Your Children About a Cancer Diagnosis

When a family member receives a diagnosis, it can present emotional challenges for children, as an expert explained in an interview with CURE.

CURE sat down with Kori Hatfield, who is the outpatient social work supervisor at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, to discuss how to talk with children about a family member’s cancer diagnosis.

“Children have all of the emotions that we do,” Hatfield said. “And so, kids can have some anticipatory anxiety if they don't know what's going on, but they can tell and feel from their parents that something stressful is happening, or they overhear things about doctor's appointments, and they are trying to put pieces of that puzzle together, but they don't really know what's going on.”

Transcript

What advice do you have for talking with children about a cancer diagnosis?

As a parent, we're kind of inherent in wanting to protect our children from hard things, right? And so this is one of those hard things that is not as easy to protect them from, and so leaning into the discomfort of having some of those challenging conversations, letting your child know that you have a cancer diagnosis and what that treatment is going to look like and how that treatment is going to impact their daily lives, disrupt those potential routines, whether that be that other family members are involved with transportation to things or helping out with homework. If the child knows what's going on, that helps to give context to some of those disruptions and changes in their own routine.

Children have all of the emotions that we do. And so, kids can have some anticipatory anxiety if they don't know what's going on, but they can tell and feel from their parents that something stressful is happening, or they overhear things about doctor's appointments, and they are trying to put pieces of that puzzle together but they don't really know what's going on. They can unintentionally make up their own answers to that, and especially young kids have magical thinking, where they might think they're the reason why their parents are upset, or they cause their parent’s cancer.

So if we're able to let them know that there's a cancer diagnosis, that this is the treatment that we're going to have, that this is the side effects that are going to happen, these are the changes in your routine, there's nothing that you did to cause this, cancer is not something that you can catch from mommy, and it's not something that mommy did or caught from anybody else. It's nobody's fault. All of that reinforcement helps to provide some comfort to the child within the home.

References

1. “Making Back-to-School Easier for Families Facing Cancer,” Moffitt Cancer Center, Aug. 4, 2025; https://www.moffitt.org/endeavor/archive/making-back-to-school-easier-for-families-facing-cancer/
2. “Back to School Time Creates ‘Perfect Storm’ For Families Facing Cancer,” CURE, Aug.18, 2025; https://www.curetoday.com/view/back-to-school-time-creates-perfect-storm-for-families-facing-cancer

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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