TAMPA, Fla. — Moffitt Cancer Center’s Families First program helps families navigate conversations with kids about cancer diagnosis.

Communicating with kids about a cancer diagnosis: Families First Program

  • Communicate early

  • Be honest

  • Consider age

  • Check-in regularly
  • Engage your support system 

If you or someone you know has recently been diagnosed with cancer, you know sharing that news can make for a difficult conversation. Social workers with the Families First program at Moffitt Cancer Center want to help patients navigate those discussions, especially when it comes to communicating with children and helping them cope.

“Explaining what type of cancer you have, where it’s affected in the body and how that cancer diagnosis may affect them, if you are going to see changes physically or changes emotionally, giving them that space to  be able to express how they may feel,” advises Alexis Youdelman, a social worker at Moffitt.

Other tips include communicating early, being honest, considering age, checking in regularly and engaging your support system.

It’s a conversation cancer survivor Danni Gallagher and her husband had twice with their two teenage children — once when Danni Gallagher was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and a second time when her mother got the same diagnosis two years later.

“With the kids, we decided to be as open and honest about the situation as we could be,” said Gallagher. “We were all going through it together. I mean, they were as impacted as I was in this situation, just in a different way.”

Gallagher and her husband also tried to explain the two different outcomes to her children after she lost her mother.

“Her journey through it was different,” said Gallagher. “We lost my mom a year and a half ago, last January.”

Those different outcomes meant questions and continued conversations for the family as Gallagher continued aggressive treatment.

She has been cancer free for about two years.

“I’ve battled stage four cancer and I’m here and feel good,” said Gallagher.

Family conversations continue and she says they’re forever changed.

“We are probably more open about a lot of things than maybe we would have been had we not been through all that,” said Gallagher. “I just look at my family and it still makes me emotional. Even after you get through it, they stood by me and supported me in so many different ways.”