How Children Respond to the Illness of a Parent

Today in our parenting group we discussed how children respond to a parent's illness. One mother talked about her struggles with long COVID and how she has lost weight and spent many hours lying on a heating pad for her various symptoms. She said that she also has had to clear her throat quite frequently and her nine-year-old just hates it when she does this and yells, "Stop it, Mommy, just stop it!"

Another mother remembered how her father would often complain about his physical maladies when she was growing up. He would say he had a fever or a headache, his legs hurt, his teeth hurt, his back hurt. She said it frightened her when he did this. She wanted her father to be strong and healthy and competent and she couldn't stand seeing him be vulnerable. Then she said an interesting thing: "Maybe that's why I'm so anxious." She realized that she had made it her life's work (as a social worker) to make sure everybody was alright all the time.

Her parents were immigrants from another country and culture, and they often did not provide explanations to help her understand what was going on. This mother's comments were helpful to all of us in understanding that a child can feel scared when her parent is ill — even if the illness is mild — and she might need some explanation, and some reassurance.

Children want their parents to be powerful. This makes them feel safe and protected. But if a parent is ill, the question arises: If my parent is sick, what will happen to me? Who is going to take care of me?

Many children also like routine and sameness. They don't want things to be different - and they especially don't want their parents to be different.

The child who told her mother to stop clearing her throat seemed annoyed — and unempathetic.

But perhaps she was actually anxious about her mother being ill all these months — and this feeling just came out as anger.

A third mother chimed in, saying her five-year-old had also expressed annoyance at her sniffing and coughing during a recent illness and that she said to him, "I know! It's horrible, right? I don't want to be doing this either!" She let him in on the fact that she didn't enjoy being ill and helped him to understand the situation from her point of view.

Children often do not take into account their parents' subjectivity — what things feel like from their parents' point of view. This mother helped her child see that there were two sides to this situation.

But what was also needed in all these situations was reassurance. If children are lucky, they don't have a great deal of experience with parental illness. And they need to be told, when it's true, that the parent is going to be OK. They need it to be explained to them explicitly, that even if the parent is coughing or sniffling, clearing her throat or lying on a heating pad, she is still there, still concerned about the child's wellbeing, still able to get the care the child needs, and even if she can't do it herself at the moment, she will find someone who can. The child needs to know that her parent can still keep her safe — even when she's feeling under the weather.

Children may still feel uncomfortable about a parent's illness after all this is explained. They may still be annoyed at times when the parent makes strange noises or has to take medicine or lie down - but the explanations about what is going on, the reassurance that the parent will be OK and the assertion the child's needs will be taken care of is still very helpful.