Have you noticed more opportunities to discuss health with your child? Have they been asking more questions about something they heard on the news? Have you recently donated resources to an organization centered around health? Perhaps more conversations are centered around someone in the family undergoing treatment. Whatever your reason for starting the conversation, we want our youth to feel heard and supported while talking about illness.

According to Jean Piaget, children usually go through each developmental stage based on age. I recommend that parents keep Piaget’s guidelines for development in mind and determine any minor shifts that they think are necessary. For instance, if a child is nearing age seven and may not have reached concrete operational yet the parents may opt to have these discussions in the pre operational age to help the child understand in a way that’s most likely going to make sense to them. 

Under 2: short and direct language is best. The conversation should focus on what is known and the child is more likely to understand if it’s close to what the child understands. For example, “Abe is going to visit the doctor” or “Betty is sick.” 

Ages 2 to 7: with more mature language and understanding, children in this age group are more likely to understand things symbolically. With this ability they are more likely to understand more about the process of going to the doctor and what being sick can look like.  With a deeper understanding of time and space, children in this age group may be able to pull from own examples to understand something new. A parent may chose to say, “remember when you were last sick and you were tired? Well, Connie is sick now so we’re trying to help her feel happy.” 

Age 7 to 11: children in this group are more likely to understand others’ perspectives, problem solve, and understand subcategories. Youth in this stage may want to know about diagnosis, treatment, timeline, etc. With a greater understanding and more preconceived notions for illness, parents may chose to steer the child to focus on sharing particular information. For instance, “we don’t know how long Donald may be sick but we know he’s fighting cancer and working on feeling better with the help of his doctors. We’re going to send him a care package to bring him some joy.” 

Age 12 and up: persons at this stage now understands hypothetical-deductive reasoning, abstract thinking, and have deeper logical thinking skills. With this higher level of understanding, people are more likely to create correlations between someone who has been sick with someone who may have an illness now. Youth in this category may notice that someone is having similar symptoms to someone else and consider they have the same thing. Persons may experience increased anxiety in this group because anxiety may predetermine a similar symptom within themself. For example, Ernie was just diagnosed with an illness where headaches were a symptom. Frannie hears this and anxiety predetermines she has the same diagnosis based on just having a similar symptom. 

I highly recommend we keep individual fears, expectations, history, and mental health in mind when considering and having these conversations about health. If a serious and/or emotional conversation about health is held, we want to focus on what we know and the emotions surrounding us. Similarly, chronological age and emotional age may differ. Adults should consider developmental disabilities, prior communication experiences, and emotional maturity when determining specifics of communication.

With more understanding and deeper conversations, I highly recommend parents and adults offer time for the youth to process feelings and ask more questions if they have any. In my eleven plus years working with youth I’ve found that it can be hurtful for them to want to know something but not know if they can ask. A reminder of open conversation and a safe place to ask can go a long way.

For more information, please reach out to your mental health provider and your primary care physician or specialist.

Article Written By:
Megan Bowling, M.A., LMFT
www.bowlingtherapy.com