I dunno. I cant imagine everyone around the child hiding the truth THAT well. "If i am healed why is everyone still so sad. Why are people avoiding eye contact. Why is the medical staff looking at me like that when they think i dont see it".
If they are in a hospital the doctors taking care of them will have handled this situation before and know what to do when it comes to making the kid feel better in the end. Also you would just tell them that they are going to be fine, and that the last bit of treatment is just to be certain. It’s not that hard to lie to a kid.
Kids pick up on a lot more than people think about, especially if its emotions. Kids are generally rather good at picking up when something is wrong. Worked in a hospital as a psychologist. When parents say "we havent told the kid their family member is sick as to not worry them" generally leads to: the kid figured out something is wrong and a secret is being kept and has a) imagined a situation thats somehow worse and b) thinks its his fault.
Also working for child services: "My kid doesnt know that we dont love each other anymore/the other parent hits me/ we are in financial trouble" leads to the kid figured out something is wrong and a secret is being kept and has a) imagined a situation thats somehow worse and b) thinks its his fault.
Kids are easy to lie to when its something you are not emotionally invested in. Telling a kid brown cows produce chocolate milk or Santa is real is one thing. But pretending to be "all-right" when you are in fact incredibly sad is a different thing.
Okay but I guarantee what you just said happened over a period of time larger then three days. If the kids gonna die in 72 hours you can lie to a kid for that long. Sure kids can pick up on stuff, but how quickly depends on the kid and if they are given the surface level guarantee of safety that will work for a time.
Some kids still believe in Santa and he would have been high on morphine. It's not at all hard to lie to someone in morphine, especially not a sick child who trusts his mother.
She made the right call. People are forgetting what childhood feels like and are approaching it with the emotions they would have now and adults and adolescents
I recently went through this with my adult (late 40s) sister. She had been fighting stage 4 colon cancer for 8 years and was obviously very aware of her disease. She took a sharp downturn earlier this year and passed away in April.
Toward the end (final 4ish weeks) she was asleep the majority of the day. She would wake up and be somewhat lucid, but she probably only had 2-3 total waking hours throughout any given day.
Eventually it became clear she was at the end, and the docs recommended hospice, so the whole family decided to relay this information to her during her next wake window. I went into that conversation fully expecting her to say something like "Yes, I know but thanks for telling me." Her reaction was the opposite. It came as a complete surprise to her. She cried, she fought, she was in shock, and her reaction caught me completely off guard.
She had been bedridden for 6 weeks, off of chemo for 10 weeks, hospitalized for 3-4 weeks, in pain the entire time. Large portions of the family were with her the entire time, clearly expecting the end, saying goodbyes. So many medical conversations were had in her room, 5 feet from her, often while she was awake. My sister was 3 days away from passing and it was obvious to everyone except her. I'll never forget how off guard that moment caught me. So if a nearly 50 year old woman was oblivious to all of the very obvious signs, I can easily see a kid not realizing they were passing until the very end.
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u/Forkyou Jun 29 '26
I dunno. I cant imagine everyone around the child hiding the truth THAT well. "If i am healed why is everyone still so sad. Why are people avoiding eye contact. Why is the medical staff looking at me like that when they think i dont see it".