If your mom has breast cancer your friends will probably want to know about it. They might ask you questions that you think are embarrassing or that you don’t feel like answering. It’s up to you whether or not you want to talk about it. Just remember that your good friends probably want to help you and that you may feel better if you talk to them about how mom’s doing and how you feel about her sickness.

Here are some of the questions your friends might ask and some answers you can give them:

Answer: My mom has a sickness called breast cancer. She’s getting treatment for it and some of the treatments make her feel bad. I’m helping her to feel better.

Answer: No, I’m not sick and nobody else in my family, except for mom, is sick. Cancer isn’t contagious. It’s not like a cold or like chicken pox. Mom didn’t catch it from anyone and I can’t catch it from her. You won’t catch it from her, either, even if you come over to my house.

Answer: I try to be with mom and help her when she needs me, but I don’t have to be there all the time. I don’t have as much time as I did before, but I still want to play and do fun stuff with my friends.

Answer: Sometimes when mom isn’t feeling well we have to be quiet, and then it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to have friends over. But mom wants me to play with my friends and she knows that it helps me to have them around. So we can play at my house or go do fun stuff together just like we always did.

Answer: Just because mom has breast cancer doesn’t mean she’s going to die. Mom’s getting treatments that will probably get rid of the cancer so that she can get better and live for a long time.

Here are some other web sites you can visit for kids who have parents with cancer.
www.kidscope.org
www.kidskonnected.org