Supporting toddlers

Budgies1978 3 years ago

2 replies

My husband has been diagnosed with a recurrence of his bowel cancer, which has spread to his liver, peritoneal, prostate and water pipe. I have 3 year old twins, one of whom seems to be completely oblivious to this, however the other one has started suffering with separation anxiety quite badly, and has become very clingy. I'm quite concerned about her as previously she was a very confident little girl. Does anyone have any advice as to how i can help her please or any organisations which support children so young? We haven't explained the situation to her as I don't think she would understand at all but she has obviously picked up that something isn't quite right with Daddy. 

Thank you for reading. 

Hannah11 3 years ago

Hello Budgies1978, 

Welcome to the Online Community. We hope that others will see your message and be able to offer some help and information from their own experiences. 

I'm sorry to hear about your husband's diagnosis and how this is affecting your family. Telling a child that someone close to them has an illness isn’t easy. You may still be processing the news yourself. It can be especially hard if you know the person won’t get better. It can be hard to know if telling them is even the best thing to do and ultimately you know your children best to make that decision. 

We have a publication that you may find helpful to look at here: https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/help/support/publications/all/supporting-children-when-someone-has-terminal-illness

There are also some children's charities that I can make you aware of too:

• Child Bereavement UK: https://www.childbereavementuk.org/
• Winston's Wish: https://www.winstonswish.org/
• Grief Encounter: https://www.griefencounter.org.uk/

Budgies1978 3 years ago

Hi Hannah. Thank you so much for your response, that’s really useful. I’ll certainly have a good look at the information tonight.