Children from 6 to 9 years old
Hi!
If your mum or dad has cancer, it might be that you feel angry or sad. That is completely normal. Other children who have a mom or dad with cancer feel that way too. Maybe your have some questions or want to know more about. Will you join me?
What is cancer?
If you want to know how cancer starts, first you need to know that your body is made up entirely of cells, kind of like the bricks of a house. The stronger the bricks, the stronger the house. It’s the same with your body.
Cells
Every day, new cells are added. That’s because cells can divide – one cell becomes two, two become four – and so on. Luckily, cells die too every day, because otherwise you’d end up with way too many.
With cancer, one of the cells gets sick. The sick cells keep dividing and growing and growing. They clump together and push healthy cells aside. They can even grow through anything and travel through the body. So, something needs to be done to stop those cancer cells!
Many many questions
Do you have questions? See if your question is listed or send us a message. We’ll try to answer as soon as possible.
Nobody can answer this question. Getting cancer is just bad luck, sheer bad luck.
Maybe you were very angry at dad or mom, said something mean, or dad or mom tripped over your bike. That’s of course very annoying, but nobody gets cancer from that. So, cancer is NOT your fault!
No, doctors try very hard to make the cancer go away. It doesn’t always work, but fortunately, many dads and moms get better. Sometimes it takes a while though.
Cancer comes from the Latin word “cancer”, which means crab or lobster. A tumor or cancerous growth looks like a little ball with tentacles. When the discoverers of cancer saw such a little ball, they thought of a crab or lobster.
Cancer has been around for a long time. During excavations in Egypt they found mummies of people who had cancer. The disease cancer is therefore very old.
Some children think cancer is contagious, but that is NOT true. So, you can still give dad or mom a kiss or hug! Also, tell your friends because sometimes they think cancer is contagious too.
Yes, but children getting cancer is much less common than dads, moms, grandpas and grandmas. If you line up 1,000 people who have cancer, there will be 995 adults and 5 children.
Yes, animals can get cancer too. After all, an animal’s body is made up of cells just like a human body. Those cells can get sick too.
A tumor is another word for a clump of cells. Other words are growth, lump, or bump. But be careful: not every lump or bump is cancer!
Sick cells can wander through the body. A new tumor can form where the cancer cell ends up. That’s called a metastasis.
There are over a 100 different types of cancer. Each type has a different name. For example, there’s breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, a brain tumor, blood cancer (leukemia), and so on.
Tests
To find out what exactly is going on or to see if the treatment is helping, your mum or dad has to go to hospital for some tests.
Blood tests
From your dad or mom’s blood, the doctor can see how the sick and healthy cells are doing. That means your dad or mom often has to get pricked!
X-rays
Have you ever broken your arm or leg? Then you know what an X-ray is. You can see bones on it. Dads or moms with cancer sometimes have to go for an X-ray too. This way, the doctor can see what’s going on inside.
Ultrasound
An ultrasound is a test using sound waves. The doctor puts a little gel on your dad or mom’s body and rubs a transmitter over it. The doctor can see if there’s anything wrong on a TV screen.
Treatment
Because there are so many different sorts of cancer, there are also different sorts of treatment. The doctor always looks for a treatment with the best possible chance of a cure and with the fewest bad side effects.
Doctors all over the world are looking for better and new ways to treat cancer. Who knows one day they will be able to cure all people and nobody will get cancer anymore.
Operations
Operations
During an operation the tumour, or a big a part as possible, will be removed by the doctor. First your mum or dad is made to go to sleep. This is called anesthesia. Sometimes removing the cancer cells is not enough, so the doctor will remove more, the whole breast, for instance, or a leg or a piece of bowel. Of course, that is not nice at all. People who will have an operation often have to stay in hospital for a while. When they come home, they can be weak from the operation. It might be that your mum or dad cannot do certain things for a while, like lifting heavy things or going upstairs.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy
Perhaps the doctor will decide to give your mum or dad chemotherapy. Those are medicines that attack the cancer cells. They make the cancer cells unable to divide and destroy them. The annoying part of it is that those medicines also attack healthy cells. Cells in the tummy, for instance, that make your mum or dad feel like being sick, or the hair roots that make your mum or dad become bald. Luckily after some time that will go away. Some mums and dads will be tired for a long time after they have had chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy can be given through an intravenous drip, in pills or as an injection. Mostly your mum or dad will get the medicines in hospital, but sometime it is as pills and they can be taken at home.
A drip, or intravenous drip, is a plastic bag with a thin tube that hangs on a tall pole and a needle goes from the tube into your mum or dad’s arm. Usually there is a box with a sort of counter hanging from the pole too. That shows exactly how many drips of medicine per minute may go through.
Sometimes cancer cells give wrong signals to their surroundings. For instance, they tell other cells that they have to grow or that blood vessels need to be made, so that the cancer cells can carry on eating. There are special medicines that can make sure that those wrong signals aren´t sent. That is called targeted treatment. Would you like to know more about chemotherapy? Please ask for the book Chemo-Kasper, if you do. The book is about a boy with cancer but it is also good to read it if your mum or dad has cancer. If the hospital does not know who Chemo-Kasper is, go to www.vokk.nl
Radiotherapy
Radiation therapy
Cancer cells can be destroyed by irradiation. That is called radiotherapy and is done with a big machine that sends invisible beams aimed very precisely at the cancerous tumour. It is very precise work because the healthy cells have to be spared as much as possible. That is why the doctor calculates in advance how much radiation is needed and where it should end up. Because that has to be on the same spot all the time, lines are drawn on your mum or dad’s body.
So that as many healthy cells as possible are saved, every irradiation only lasts a couple of minutes, but it is given for many days in a row. Sometimes your mum or dad has to go to hospital every day for a whole month.
Other treatments
Hormone therapy
Some substances the body makes itself, for instance, hormones, make cancer cells grow faster. Of course, that is not good. That is why your mum or dad sometimes gets a treatment that gets rid of the hormones. This hormone therapy is usually made up of medicines.
Immunotherapy
Another weird word. Immunotherapy is medicines that make sure that your mum or dad’s body can defend itself better against cancer cell attacks. They try to make the body stronger, so that the cancer cells have less chance to grow.
Stem cell transplantation
If a whole lot of chemotherapy or radiotherapy is needed, stem cells can be damaged. To make sure that there can be new blood cells, there is a treatment called stem cell transplantation. Stem cells are a sort of mother cells from which –once they are grown – various new blood cells can come. Stem cells are in the bone marrow, that is on the inside of the bones. First of all, your mum or dad will have an injection to make the stem cells move from the bone marrow to the blood. Then the stem cells are taken out of the blood and kept. After that your mum or dad will get an awful lot of chemo or radiation and then in the end their cells will be put back again. If everything goes according to plan, the stem cells will grow into healthy blood cells after a while. While this whole treatment is going on, your mum or dad will sometimes have to be in a separate room and you cannot go to visit them. That can last a couple of weeks.
Changes
If your mum or dad has cancer, usually a lot will change.
That takes some getting used to.
Often going to hospital
Somebody who has cancer often has to go to hospital. For tests, to talk to the doctor, for chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Sometimes that hospital is nearby, sometimes it isn’t. Would you like to see where your mum or dad goes? Just ask if you can go along. Have a good look around you and ask if there is something you don’t understand.
Staying the night and/or staying at school for lunch
Sometimes your mum or dad are able to go to hospital during your school hours. But often that´s just not possible. So you have to stay at school at lunchtime more or go to afterschool club. It can also be that your mum or dad has to stay in hospital for a couple of nights. That can mean that you stay the night at a friend’s or that your granny and grandad come to stay.
Lying on the sofa
Cancer makes you tired. You yourself, but also your mum or dad. From all that running to hospital, from the medicines, from the radiotherapy, from all the worrying thoughts. That’s why a mum or dad with cancer will lie on the sofa more often than a healthy mother or father. Usually it goes away after a bit, but it can also be that your mum or dad will be tired for a long time.
Do fun things together
During the treatment your mum or dad will not be able to come to school or sports matches with you. That doesn’t mean that nothing is possible. If you tidy up your own room, make your own bed, or clear the table, mum or dad can have a little rest and maybe you can still do some fun things together
What about you?
Being scared, angry and sad because your mum or dad has cancer is really normal. Let’s see what other children say.
Feeling alone
Some children feel very alone. It feels like you are the only one with a mum or dad with cancer. Maybe it helps a little if you know that it’s not true. That’s why we made this website. Especially for all those children who have a mother or father with cancer.
Not being able to sleep
That’s a big problem. It does make you very tired, doesn’t it? Have you ever tried thinking of something nice? Close your eyes, get into a rocket or onto a (flying) horse and fly to a beautiful spot in the woods or to the beach in your head. Feel the warm sand between your toes, the warm water, are you there yet?
Tummyache and headache
Sometimes you´re so tired or so anxious that you get tummyache or a headache. That’s quite normal. Don’t go and think that you are ill too, but try to do nothing every now and then. Just curl up with a comic on the sofa. Email us if you have any other ideas.
Fingers in your ears
All that going on about cancer! Maybe you don’t want to hear anything about it. Of course, that’s fine too, but sometimes that´s hard. Important things have to be talked about. But it can also feel like it’s only about cancer, that everybody starts talking about it and that the phone rings the whole day. Try to work a way out with your mum or dad.
Be happy, don´t give up and be strong
That’s by far the most important thing of all. Write a postcard, make a drawing, be strong, don´t give up hope. Is your birthday party not going ahead? Next month it might. Can´t you go on holiday now? Let´s hope next year you will!
School
Class assembly
Try to talk about it in your class now and then, because then other children will know what it’s like at home. Tell them cancer is not catching, that being bald or wearing a wig is part of it, that Chemo-Kasper is fighting really hard against the cancer cells. Ask your teacher to help you.
Stop thinking about it for a minute
Maybe you don’t think about it at school. That’s nice, because you can be busy doing other things. Maybe it´s at school that you can´t stop thinking about it. Then your head is just too full and there´s no room left for maths or spelling. Tell your teacher and think of how to make it better together.
Teacher doesn’t want to think about it
That can also happen. Some people actually find it scary to talk about cancer. Think of a plan together with your mum or dad and tell your teacher about this website.
Swearing
They sometimes say that swearing doesn’t hurt, but that isn’t true. Do you also get mad if “kanker”(cancer) is used as a swear word? Try not to, but do say you don’t want to hear it. Say that it’s stupid. Go to your teacher. Don’t start kicking or hitting, but do something about it!
Giving a talk
Have you ever thought about giving a talk about cancer? You know an awful lot about it by now. Make a list of things you want to tell. Go and find leaflets and pictures. Ask the nurses in hospital for a drip bag, plasters, a sick bowl and bandages. Use this site. It’s going to be a super talk for sure!
Friends, children in the neighbourhood
Make sure that your friends know what is going on. Ask them if they want to help you when you’re feeling down. And more than anything else, go and do lots of nice things together!
What helps?
- Talk about it
- Write about it
- Draw about it
- Hit a cushion hard
- Cycle against the wind
- Cry
Do you know any other things that can help or do you have something to say too? Just click on the bulletin board.
Talk about cancer
The future
Fortunately, many parents get better again. The cancer stays away and the unpleasant time of hospital, treatments and being sad is over.
Some parents have been changed by the cancer and the treatments. They are missing a breast, have a scar or a stoma. Others have to do exercises every day to get stronger again. Sometimes you don’t notice anything on the outside, but there is still a lot of worry going on. Then your father or mother goes for a walk, cycle, work in the garden or make sculptures. Or they go and talk to someone. Because that helps. But of course you know that too.
Of course, your father or mother still has to go to the hospital every now and then to see if everything continues to go well. But that too diminishes after a while. The cancer becomes a memory. Maybe you’ll think about it again later, maybe you won’t. Everything is good.
If mom or dad doesn’t get better
If it is not possible to get rid of the cancer, there are often medications that ensure that the cancer cells remain silent for a while. And when those medicines no longer work, there are sometimes new medicines available. So the cancer cells may remain there, but not grow or change. So your mom or dad can live for a very long time!
The cancer cells must of course be closely monitored. So your mom or dad will have to go to the hospital every now and then. And maybe your mom or dad is no longer in great shape. Being tired and sad is also part of it because it is quite strange to know that those cancer cells do not go away.
When mom or dad dies
Sometimes a person is so sick that the doctor thinks he or she will die soon. You will feel angry, sad and scared. You may have all kinds of questions, such as when your mom or dad will die and how that will happen. Talk about it with your parents or the doctor.
It’s nice to keep doing things. You can make a wish jar or an idea box with notes of things you would like to do together, such as baking cookies or reading in the big bed. Maybe you can take a selfie or video as a memory.
If mom or dad is in severe pain and is confused or scared, the doctor can give medication to ensure that your dad or mom no longer feels anything and goes to sleep. If you want to say something or give a hug, do so before the doctor gives these medications. It may take a few days for your mom or dad to die.
A dying person sleeps more and more and needs less and less food and drink. Maybe you want to lie next to mom or dad for a while, or you hope it will be over soon. It's not strange if you think this. It's just hard when someone you love dies. Maybe you want to say something, do some crafts or write something. Or especially cuddle a lot.
Some dads or moms are so sick that they no longer want to continue living. They ask the doctor to help them die. Maybe you don't understand it, but really, your mom or dad loves you very much. And yet it doesn't work anymore. Give one last hug or kiss. The doctor first gives you an injection of medicine that makes your mom or dad fall very deeply asleep. Then a medicine that causes the heart to stop beating.
After mom or dad dies, there will be a funeral or cremation. Maybe you want to write something about mom or dad or paint the coffin. Maybe you want to make music or sing. Maybe you don't want these kinds of things. It may take a while before you notice that you are doing better again.
Coloring pages
Do you want to surprise your dad, mom, grandpa, grandma or someone else with a beautiful coloring page? Then download them below by clicking on the coloring page you like.
Have fun! You can always send photos of the possible to us!
[click on an image to download]
[click on an image to download]
Bulletin board
Do you also want your drawing on the notice board? Send it to us! You can also download Coloring Pages.
[click on an image to enlarge]
[click on an image to enlarge]
Shop
Not yet available in English.
Bibliotheek
Jess en Sam gaan op jacht
De papa van Sam en de mama van Roos hebben kanker. Gelukkig krijgen ze hulp van Jess en Josie.
Wanneer je moeder of vader kanker heeft
Als je hoort dat je moeder of vader kanker heeft, dan verandert er veel. Je wereld staat ineens op z’n kop.
Alles wat ik voel
In dit boek worden allerlei soorten emoties benoemd en worden er vragen gesteld en tips gegeven over hoe met deze ingewikkelde gevoelens om te gaan.
Het Klokhuisboek over kanker
Uitleg over kanker, reacties van andere kinderen, grappige weetjes, chats, mailtjes en heel veel praktische informatie.
De club van ons
Invulboek voor ouder en kind om herinneringen op te schrijven, foto’s en briefjes in te plakken en geheimen te delen.
Hotel De Grote L
Eigenlijk zouden álle kinderen en volwassenen dit boek moeten lezen! Gek, mooi en herkenbaar.
Kleine Monnik
De kleine Monnik maakt een reis op zoek naar antwoorden en kracht. Over hoe je kind in moeilijke tijden sterk te maken.
De koningin met de 7 pruiken
Over een koningin die kanker krijgt, haar haren verliest en haar kamer niet meer uit wil.
Overal en ergens
Yolanda vindt haar overleden mama in alle dingen om haar heen. Mooi boek vol troost.
Lucas en de ziekte kanker
Bij de moeder van Lucas wordt een knobbeltje in haar borst gevonden. Lucas vertelt wat hij meemaakt.
Waantje krijgt de knarsen
Als Waantje kladderadatsj (chemo) krijgt, staan alle Horizonnetjes klaar om haar te helpen.
Mama
Stijn (6) tekent over zijn moeder die borstkanker heeft; een boekje om zelf mee aan de slag te gaan. Te bestellen via boekmama2021@gmail.com
Een zoen zo groen
Sprookjesachtig prentenboek over een meisje met een moeder die een boze knoop in haar lijf heeft.
Kids Power, word je nog beter?
Heeft je vader of moeder kanker? Dan is dit boek iets voor jou. In dit powerboek maken de dieren je sterk.
Opvrolijkvogeltje
Als dit prachtige, veelkleurig vogeltje door het land vliegt, brengt ze vrolijkheid en energie aan alle dieren die ze tegenkomt.
Doe-boek papa/mama
Informatief werkboek van het Erasmus MC voor kinderen van wie een vader of moeder kanker heeft.
Doe-boek opa/oma
Informatief werkboek van het Erasmus MC voor kinderen van wie een opa of oma kanker heeft.
Mijn mama heeft een zakje
Een moeder met een zakje? Dat klinkt wel een beetje raar. Weet jij wat een stoma is? Lees dan dit boekje maar!
Papa, hoor je me?
De vader van Polle is overleden en ligt in de kamer. Polle praat tegen hem en vertelt hoe zijn vader steeds zieker werd.
Mama heeft kanker
Als mama een knobbeltje in haar buik heeft, breekt er voor Bram en Lise een verwarrende tijd aan (ebook, online te lezen).
Misschien is doodgaan wel hetzelfde als een vlinder worden
Christiaan is met opa in het park. Ineens komt hun gesprek op de dood.
Mama’s borst is ziek
Een beeldend en vernieuwend prentenboek, hoopvol met hier en daar een knipoog.
