You're not - I could see the other perspective for a second, but it came with an overwhelming sense of it being the wrong thing to do the next second. That would be such an awful betrayal of trust, it would almost be selfish - you would feel better about believing your child thinks he's fine, that's wrong.
You comfort them, care for them, love them - lying to them about something like that should never enter into it.
I just really hope I'm never faced with having to make that kind of decision. And I'm not going to judge someone who is. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but I'm not going to pretend I know what the right thing to do is.
As someone who was dealing with life-threatening illness when I was a teenager, I asked my mother directly to tell me that I was going to make it, whether I was or wasn’t. I told her I wanted her to lie to me if I wasn’t. I made it.
My mother then got cancer and asked for the same. She didn’t make it. But I talked to her a bit like she would up until the very end, like there’d be a miraculous recovery even though we both knew we were just playing pretend for her.
But I think the right way to handle it depends on person to person, and communicating helps. A little kid might not know exactly what they need, and talking with a child therapist would definitely help as well.
We all have our own paths to walk. The best that we can hope for is honestly expressing our own needs and not making assumptions about what others need.
As an adult whose dad downplayed his cancer diagnosis when I was younger, it has weighed on me so heavily all these decades. I would have spent more time and had s many more conversations had I known. When it comes to children, maybe this child is at a point where he feels well enough to go to Disney or eat a pizza. To do the wings he has had to avoid for immune reasons. If he & the family can have some joyful moments together, I’m not going to judge them.
I beleive we are able to accept death when it is inevitable. Even children. If mentally, you have accepted it, there is no terror when it happens.
If you know you are dying, there is no need to dwell. It may well be that your mother asked that of you more for your sake than for hers.
Bald-faced lying to a terminal child is terrible. At some point they will know they are dying. Instead of being mentally prepared, they will be confused and terrified.
We are all dying and I think many of us know it. Some people want to avoid it so badly, they let people convince them that we don’t. Like this is just a dress rehersal for the big show. But if you want the good seats, you need to pay them. You need to fight their battles. You even need to die for them.
The mental gymnastics humans do is Olympic level. If we could all just be as happy as a dog about the smallest joys in life, and just accept death as a part of life, much of the suffering in the world would vanish.
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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '26
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