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S2E5 - When Grandparents Are Sick: How to Talk to Kids About Illness · Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist

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You're listening to the
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Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
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Hi, I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.
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This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give
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you insight awareness and enlightenment about your parenting
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and your relationship with your kids.
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In today's episode, I am answering a question from Corinne
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and Corinne reached out about her five year old son
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and was curious how to engage in him. I'm sorry, engage with him in conversation
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regarding an ALS diagnosis with his grandmother
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and what that should sound like what that should look like
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and just, just comes kind of overall questions of how to handle that in the best way.
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So
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I'm going to read a little bit of her email so that you
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can get a context for the question and then we'll dive into some thoughts
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and here's why I think this is so helpful inevitably, as parents,
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we are going to be forced to face conversations
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about difficult topics. So whether it's a
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terminal illness, whether it's death, whether it's loss, whether it's grief,
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whether it's moving.
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I mean, there's all kinds of things that
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we ideally want to shield our children from.
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But the reality of life is that they can't be shielded from them.
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So then they need to be told in helpful, appropriate intentional ways.
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So, Corinne I really appreciate the email and you asking this question.
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So let me read parts of her email to you and then we'll dive in.
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So she says
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my mother in law was diagnosed with ALS in December.
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It is progressing rapidly and we expect to lose her in the coming months.
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My son is still working through losing our cat a few years ago.
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I can't imagine the loss he will feel when his grandmother who
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is a person that loves him in an irrational way passes on.
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Isn't that true? Grandparents love our kids in irrational ways?
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I think that's such a helpful phrase.
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We have been truthful in our, in our explanation that she is sick,
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her muscles are getting too tired to work and that she won't get better.
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We answer his questions as best we can, but it is hard to explain it. Sometimes
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we have visited her and he has seen her go from actively playing all
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day with him to using a walker to now being in a wheelchair.
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We've not told him that this will cause her to die.
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I honestly just have no idea how to even begin to say that to him.
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He had a meltdown this weekend when I explained at the library,
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you can take a book but you return it after a week or two.
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So I'm imagining an epic reaction to anything
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I say about his grandmother's illness will end.
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We wanted to be prepared to help him through it and feel now is the
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time to set ourselves up to handle it since we will be grieving too.
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I was hoping you could talk about this topic. I tried to read up on it,
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but the best I could find was a book from
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the nineties and it was mostly about parents passing away.
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Thank you so much. Corinne.
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OK.
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So Corinne, thank you so much. I think this will really be helpful to so many of us. And
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let me say this before we dive in
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often, we think that
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because maybe something like this has already happened,
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there's a statute of limitations or we've somehow missed
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an opportunity to have these discussions with our kids.
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So you might be listening and saying, gosh, I would have heard,
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I wish I would have heard this podcast
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a year ago before XYZ happened and I didn't say the things I could have
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said or I didn't handle it in the way that I wish that I would have
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the beauty of being a parent and raising kids
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is that you can always circle back to an issue
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and you can always bring something up if you
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would like to address it in a different way.
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So whether you are preparing for a future conversation or whether
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you might want to circle back to something that's already taken place
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and you can have a different kind of discussion with this information.
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I hope that you will find this helpful,
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the path to calm, confident and in control parenting starts now.
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All right.
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So one of the things that I advocate across the board,
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always absolute on purpose is we share age appropriate truth with our children
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and what that looks like what that means is, we don't share too much,
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we don't share things that they can't understand,
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but we do not
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try to hide things from them.
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This is what I'm told a lot.
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I meet with so many parents, you know,
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running a center and working exclusively with children.
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We see hundreds of families a week
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and
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there are so many conversations that we have with parents
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and pretty consistently what I hear is
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I just don't want them to know. I don't want to have to tell them.
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I don't think that they need to be told that right now.
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I want to hide that from them as long as possible.
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I want to try to shield them from that. I want to protect them from that.
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And I know all of those things are done with the best of intentions.
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But here's what I also know and I've done earlier podcast
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episodes about this about having difficult conversations and you know,
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how do you talk about tricky subjects with kids?
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So
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here's what I think should be at the heart of
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everything that we do when we're thinking about these concepts
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by choosing to tell age appropriate truth. There is never a chance
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no possibility
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that a child will feel betrayed,
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that a child will resent
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something that we did
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or that they at some point realized that they were lied to.
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There's no chance of it.
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But any other option that we take that is a risk
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and you know how much
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I value and
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teach and train and coach on relationship.
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So preservation of the right relationship necessitates
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that we tell age appropriate truth
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because any other alternative creates a fracture.
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And there's the possibility for a lot of fallout for that
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and that's not what we want.
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So age appropriate truth becomes a requirement.
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And that means we share things in very simple terms.
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We share things in ways that a child developmentally can understand
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and we don't give the child more information than they need.
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The goal is to fill in gaps of information.
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So what might a child need to know or want to know?
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And you answer it in the simplest easiest of terms and you leave it at that.
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You don't need to give illustrations. You don't need to talk more than you need.
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You don't need to let your own emotions or opinions get involved in it.
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It's just age appropriate truth.
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So, Corinne,
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you mentioned saying she's sick and her muscles are getting
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too tired to work and that she won't get better.
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Those are examples of age appropriate truth
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because a child can understand
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being sick, a child can understand muscles, being tired.
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A child can understand not getting better.
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Those are appropriate statements to share
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so that the child is not wondering what's going on.
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We eliminate so much
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confusion, difficulty, frustration, resentment, I could go on and on.
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We get rid of all of those things
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when we give a child information so that they're not
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left to try to figure it out for themselves.
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So, age appropriate truth is by far the most important piece of this conversation.
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Another thing to keep in mind
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don't bring
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the discussion of her death up until it's necessary.
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Here's what I mean by that
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time is very skewed for children, especially for someone as young as your son.
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At five years old a day feels like an eternity
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and a week feels like infinity.
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Right. So,
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yes, your mother in law is deteriorating. Yes, the disease is progressing,
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but
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he does not need to have a conversation about her dying until
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it's pretty clear that it's going to be pretty imminent
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because what will happen otherwise is you'll have a conversation
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and
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if a month or two months or three months go by,
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that feels like a lifetime for a child.
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So you always want to make
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the discussion relevant to the timing
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and it's only
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brought up when it's needed.
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So, if you realize that, you know,
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we only have a week or so or we only have several days that
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is when you would want to have the discussion about the death itself.
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However, what you're doing in discussing the changes that he's going to notice
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that is going to be very, very important.
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So as you continue to visit and as he continues to see changes,
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you absolutely want to bring those topics up to discuss,
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but you can wait on the death discussion until it's
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more close to that stage.
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And I want to share one of my favorite quotes,
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some of you that have been listening to me for a long time.
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I'm sure I've referenced my quote books.
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So for years and years now I've been
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collecting quotes and I write them down.
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So if I hear one, read one, see one, whatever,
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I add it to my quote book and I have filled several
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of them and I'm on like the third or fourth one now
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and I just love it because I feel like
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you can go back and read quotes that were significant to you.
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And there's something really deep about
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a quote that you just feel addresses something that
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you needed to hear or know in that moment.
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So, one of my favorite quotes came out of a book that I read years ago.
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And Corinne. So you mentioned about the library scenario
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and you explained that the book has to be returned.
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And so you said I'm imagining an epic reaction to
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anything I say about how his grandmother's illness will end.
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Here's my quote to encourage and inspire you
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"don't ram your shin up against a bucket that isn't there."
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So, here's what we will often do as parents.
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We look at a scenario like that isolated in the library and we go,
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oh my gosh.
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Well, if I enlarge that to what's gonna happen with his grandma, I can only imagine.
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And we get ourselves worked up into this. Oh, no. What if scenario
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and we're ramming our shin up against a bucket that isn't there.
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So rest in the peace of each moment, rest in the knowledge that
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when you have to have that conversation,
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it will go as it goes and there's no point or help to you
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in
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ruminating over it and anticipating it and planning for how it's going to go or
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how it might go or how badly it might go or any of those things.
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So I would just encourage you to
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stay in the moment about those discussions about your mother in law
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and beyond that,
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don't let that consume your thoughts because that will
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only make things harder for you as well.
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And
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I think finally,
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when we have conversations about topics like this,
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we have to be prepared that our kids are going to ask us questions.
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And sometimes you can't plan for the type of question you're
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going to get asked and therefore you can't plan your response.
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So you have to be ok
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with
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anticipating that the child's going to be curious,
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the child's going to be inquisitive.
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And as he's asking questions,
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your job is to answer them truthfully
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age appropriately and truthfully.
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And if you don't know the answer to the question,
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it's ok to say,
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I guess, I don't know.
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So for example, if a child were to say,
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why is grandma not going to get better,
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you might say, well,
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her muscles are just going to be too tired and
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they're not going to be able to get strong again.
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But why
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if you get to a point where you don't
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really have an answer beyond what you've already shared,
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if it is true.
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Now, here's my disclaimer. Don't say, I don't know to avoid answering the question.
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But if you're truthfully saying
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buddy, you know, I really don't know.
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I, I don't know why this, this sickness does that to someone. I don't know why
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the sickness makes it to where you can't get better. I just, I don't understand why.
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I don't know. I don't know either.
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If that is a truthful answer,
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your child will be satisfied with that.
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But don't say, I don't know in an effort to not have to answer the question.
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That's a very different dynamic.
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So you want to answer questions truthfully back to the age appropriateness
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and
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you
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really, the goal is
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whatever you can do to alleviate confusion,
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unknown or unexpected.
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Those are the kinds of conversations that you need to have.
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So Corinne as you know, that your mother in law is imminent as you know,
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that there's probably going to be a death shortly thereafter and
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therefore a funeral and therefore whatever else is going to come,
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you want to work in some of those conversations as well.
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So when grandma dies,
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we're going to go and have a service for her
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or we're going to meet at the church or we're going
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to meet at the cemetery or we're going to meet at
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the lake or whatever the plan is going to be.
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It's helpful to have that frank discussion with your kids.
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Again, you want to eliminate the unknown, the unexpected and confusion.
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So the more information you can provide
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so that the child knows what is going on,
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that is going to eliminate the bulk of the hardship.
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I mean, it's still going to be difficult for all of you,
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but that's at least setting everyone up to be in the best case scenario.
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And here's my final thought as a takeaway
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at five years old, your son developmentally will not have the cognitive capacity
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to process death in a meaningful way.
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And even if you say,
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you know, the heart stops beating
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and the lungs no longer have air in them.
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And you know, if you're religious, you know, the
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your your grandma went to heaven to be with Jesus, whatever,
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whatever your explanation is of what death is to a child,
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they will not at five be able to understand that
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there is a brain surge,
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developmental brain surge that takes place around the 8 to 9 year mark
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in children.
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So what happens at that point is
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because they have a new cognitive capacity that they did not have before
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they will start to process things that happened
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in their past because they're finally able to.
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So I just want to let all of you know that
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sometimes you will be surprised at why years down the road,
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all of a sudden your child starts to grieve or starts to bring it up
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again or starts to talk about it again or starts to ask questions again.
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And many parents will say to me that was three years ago.
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I have no idea why he's still thinking about that.
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The developmental surges that take place afford children the opportunity to start
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to process things that they were not able to process before.
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So Corinne be prepared that there might be future discussions
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once he's better able to comprehend the idea of death.
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I mean, look,
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death is very vague. Death is very abstract. Death is very confusing.
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I remember my son was also five when his grandfather died
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and when I was having the conversation with him about his grandfather dying,
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I said,
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well, he went to heaven to be with Jesus
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and he said,
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well, is he going to come back once he goes to heaven?
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And in his mind, you know, heaven is a place that you visit and then you can return
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and
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it's very difficult to communicate the idea of heaven or about death or
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you know, those, those are very vague abstract concepts.
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And so kids can't really conceive of that,
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which is why eventually they will process it at later points in their childhood.
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So know that that will likely come.
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But the best that you can do in the meantime is to give age appropriate truth.
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Don't bring anything up unless it's necessary and needed
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and respond to what he's exposed to answer questions truthfully.
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Don't ram your shin up against a bucket that isn't there,
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Corinne. Thank you so much for your email and I really am sorry for
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what your family is going through and my prayers are with you. I I'm prayerful that
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things will be as easy as they can be in a difficult situation. So
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if you are interested in getting a question answered on an episode,
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please email me brenna@thekidcounselor.com
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and here's what I wanna make you all aware of.
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I'm so grateful for each to every one of you.
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Thank you for the time that you spend with me each week. We will talk again soon. Bye.
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