April 11, 2026
One of the realizations we had to come to is that CHD didn't just affect Brian and I. It impacted the entire family.
How were we going to explain CHD to our kids?
At the time, our older boys were 10 and 6. And just like typical boys, they love superheroes. We chose to use that analogy to explain Lucas' heart to them.
They had seen the Iron Man movie and knew more than I could ever clearly articulate about how that iron heart worked. So one night at dinner shortly after receiving Lucas's diagnosis, we told them that Lucas had a special heart like iron man. It would need a special doctor to work on his special heart so he could live and grow. Once he had the surgeries, he would be able to play with them. We kept it simple and in terms they could understand. We didn't want to present this as scary because they were so young (even though we were terrified of the unknown).
My mother-in-law later took the boys to Build-A-Bear right after Lucas was born and made an Iron Man bear for Lucas. I think this helped the boys feel better about being away from us.
We also bought books like the one you see below to help explain CHD to them (no, this is not a paid endorsement...just a good book).
There are definitely resources out there geared specifically toward helping your kids understand CHD. The most important thing we found was giving them honesty in kid-friendly terms. Yes, it's hard. But your kids trust you to tell them the truth and they are more resilient than we tend to give them credit for.
You can do this!
With HEARTfelt love,
Katie
Add comment
Comments