You’re right Erica, they do sense things and it’s so important to be aware of this isn’t it. Helps you be proactive in dealing with it, rather than reactive x
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Hi everyone, hope you’re all doing okay?
We just wanted to share with you an updated section on our webpage here: Coronavirus: support for people with blood cancer | Blood Cancer UK if you scroll down to the section " Supporting your child’s mental health we have added some advice and information.
We could see from our forum community and from your conversations just how significant of an issue this is for so many of you, and so we do really hope this will be helpful to you all 
Take care and please do keep reaching out to us,
Su
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There is some really great advice here. I found it so useful and especially needed. Thank you x
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Thanks @SuBloodcancerUK and all at Blood Cancer UK for compiling this really useful advice, it is just what we need, it is so important.
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Good morning everybody. This advice came in so useful a few days ago. A couple of family members contracted COVID so I knew it would send my youngest into a spin! She woke up, as I got up for work, sobbing, because she had had a dream that everybody had passed and she had had to say goodbye. Completely out of the blue, this lead to questions about my illness, asking me to promise her I would never leave etc and questioning how quickly I would get ill if my ‘poorly belly’ got worse. Well, it wasn’t a conversation I’d expected to have on my own and before work! I suppose this shows when you need to talk, you can’t plan it, you just need to get it out. I’m glad I had read this information and other posts regarding responding to children’s anxieties. Acknowledging her fears was so important, not being able to tell her that everything would always be ok was hard, but necessary. You know what, I think I did ok. She was very upset, but content with my answers. She said she may ask more after Christmas but at the moment she knows enough. She is very happy it’s just us for Christmas (and she loves seeing family) because she feels safe. Phew, now just the challenge of getting them back to school when the time comes!!! It was an emotional and exhausting conversation and I needed a lot of support to get through the day! So, I’ll keep reading the information to remind myself of strategies and the support out there! I hope everybody else and their families are coping ok X
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Thank you so much for sharing this @Nichola75 . Your conversation with your daughter sounds incredibly emotive and it’s no surprise it left you feeling a bit drained - she sounds like an incredibly thoughtful person to be so worried. Thank you so much for sharing how you coped with this, I think it’ll be really helpful for people going through similar things with their children.
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I wonder how everyone has been doing and how your children have been coping recently? Have the school closures lessened their anxiety a little? Hope you’re all doing okay.
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Hi @Alice_BloodCancerUK . We have good weeks and bad weeks, particularly with my youngest (11 year old) The anxiety has definitely eased because schools closed, However, this week wasn’t so good. She started to panic about returning to school. Her main concern is that no one underdtands why she gets angry when people don’t wear their masks. She said nobody understands how it feels to worry about making somebody else poorly. I found out that she has been pulling her eyebrows out when she is nervous. It had really upset her so I’m so glad she told her sister, who in turm told me. She has also become obsessed with cleaning pacakaging etc. The school have been great and I’m looking into other support networks. Its upset me, and angered me this week. A whole host of emotions. I beginning to realise this is just part of the journey and hoping I’ll get better at managing the situations as time goes on x
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My daughter is in year 2, she hasn’t been back since before Xmas. The problem I have is getting her to study via the Google classroom, she has 2 live lessons a day which always gets her upset when I try to connect, also the content maths and English she find difficult, I’m supposed to upload her work via my phone, teacher then sends messages back. Where getting behind there quiet understanding but say it’s part of the school curriculum.
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Hi John, the logistics is so difficult isn’t it and so much harder for the younger ones. We invested in a google chrome book which has been a life saver, however, I appreciate not everybody will be in a position to purchase one of these. If you can it’s worth looking into. Online learning is so difficult. I think live lessons are great but connections etc often make this quite stressful! You can only do what you can - your daughters well-being is the most important. We have families at our school struggling with the same issues. As long as you try you can’t do much more. How is your daughter coping during this lock down?
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She’s a lot lively lately, we play with a ball for ages , and we’ve done some of the exercises but she doesn’t want to go out, most of our fun things have closed.
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All of those things are so important aren’t they. Keep us updated on how you are doing.
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