Co-Parenting a Child With Cancer

No one ever wants to hear the words from a doctor, “Your child has cancer.” Yet, tens of thousands of families receive that diagnosis every year. And no matter the type of cancer, the disease affects the entire family.

Today, we’ll discuss how to co-parent a child with cancer. Also, we’ll tell you how a co-parenting app for Android and iPhone can help you better handle some aspects of co-parenting a child with cancer.

What’s the Same

In many ways, co-parenting a child with cancer looks much the same as living with your spouse and parenting a child with cancer. You and your entire household will deal with the ebbs and flows of emotions. You’ll need to support one another and learn to ask for the support you need.

Then, there are the technical aspects of cancer. It’s expensive and requires staying on top of scheduling.

Read below to discover a few unique aspects of parenting a child with cancer.

Stages of Grief and Coping

Everyone copes with grief differently. Everyone experiences the typical stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—just not in the same order.

Grief stages aren’t linear. You don’t progress through them. You don’t graduate from one level to the next. These emotions ebb and flow, rising and falling like tides, sometimes rushing like a raging flood. They can repeat indefinitely.

Grief and coping mechanisms show up in various ways and at different times during your child’s treatment. Acknowledge how you, your children, and your co-parent might feel based on behavior.

Naming your feelings helps with awareness. You can better conquer a feeling once you become mindful of it (i.e., “I’m feeling helpless.” or “She seems sad right now.”). That’s not to say that emotion will immediately disappear once you call it out, but identification helps.

Becoming mindful and identifying feelings allows you or your family member to work through and relieve yourself of negative thoughts. A feelings wheel can help you pinpoint more complex emotions.

However, don’t let those strong feelings turn into poor behaviors. Talk with a family mental health therapist for valuable strategies to overcome negative emotions.

Support

It will take a village to keep you and your family going. Accept people’s offers for help.

Simple things like taking some chores off your shoulders can lift a huge burden. Can someone cook you a meal? Say yes, and inform your helpers about any dietary guidelines.

Think about having someone walk your dog, pick up groceries, or do other mundane things you just don’t have much time for anymore.

Money

Cancer treatments, travel expenses, and time off work can mean huge financial stresses. You and your family have more important things to worry about.

Look into financial assistance. Doctors, nurses, or other medical staff members at your treatment center might be able to point you in the right direction. They can find ways to reduce your expenses, from insurance to financial aid.

Scheduling

Doctors’ visits, treatments, and check-ups can be challenging to keep up with. Combine that with your other children’s schedules, and you’ll likely miss an important date or deadline now and then.

Write things down, preferably in one central location. Create a schedule. Share it with the whole family.

What’s Different

Some aspects of raising a child with cancer look the same from household to household. Other facets are unique to co-parenting.

Support

Sole parenting means your support role can be a full-time job for long stretches of time. You shouldn’t expect to handle everything all by yourself.

Lean on family and friends for support. You need to “fill your cup” to have more care, love, and joy to pour into your children.

Learn to recognize when you need a break before you snap. Do your favorite things. Rest and relax.

It may be challenging to wrap your head around now, but your co-parent can provide much-needed support. Be willing to open up and be vulnerable.

Keep up polite, child-centered communication with your co-parent as much as possible. Let them know if you need to switch your co-parenting plan or custody schedule to de-stress. Offer them the same favor.

Use a co-parenting app to send and store your messages to each other. Some even have tone meters to help you communicate amicably.

Money

Cancer treatments mean extra medical bills. You and your co-parent need a way to carry out your court-mandated child support payments and bill-sharing.

Sharing bills with your co-parent can be difficult and time-consuming without the help of technology. The easiest and most straightforward way to share billing information, request payment, and pay according to your child support plan is to download a co-parenting expense tracker.

Scheduling

Scheduling your kids’ activities across two households is complex. Keeping up with all the medical visits when your child has cancer can be extremely difficult. Not to mention, you and your co-parent need ways to communicate medically necessary information with each other.

Use a shared parenting app to remember all the important dates, events, doctors’ notes, and medical histories.

Co-Parenting and Your Child’s Medical Needs

Parenting is challenging. Co-parenting is challenging. Caring for any child with special needs is challenging. It’s all demanding and complicated.

Accept that you’ll feel some deep, consuming emotions sometimes. Name those feelings to conquer them.

Look for the helpers. Lean on mental health therapists, family, and friends to help you work through troubling thoughts and boost your mood. Lean on hospital staff to help you with medical and financial needs.

Lean on your co-parent for support. If you and your co-parent aren’t amicable yet, work on it by communicating courteously—you’ll get there.

Lean on technology to help you and your co-parent deal with the technicalities of raising a child with special medical needs. A co-parenting app can reduce the time, complication, and stress of sharing schedules, notes, and bills.