What should children be told?

There are no right or wrong answers – every family’s situation is different.

- Being willing to talk and listen is often much more important than what is actually said.

What to tell your children will probably depend on a couple of things:

- How comfortable you are talking about what has happened, and how old they are.
- Whatever their age though, children need clear and honest explanations.

Children of all ages like and need to make sense of the things that happen to them and their family:

- As far as possible try to explain what has happened, how it was caused and what the effects are.
- Children may ask you questions that you do not know the answers to.
- It is okay to tell them that you do not know yet either.

Younger children do better with simple, uncomplicated explanations about what has happened, e.g “Daddy has had a crash in the car and hurt his back”.

They may compare this to injuries that they themselves have had, or to things they have seen on the television and it will help to talk about this with them.
Drawing pictures or using toys may help you to explain things.
Playing and acting out situations is familiar and enjoyable to young children. It can help them understand and may encourage them to ask you questions.

Young children see the world as revolving around them and can easily imagine that they must have had something do with what has happened.

They may not actually tell you this though, so it is important to say that it was not their fault.
They may also be concerned that the same thing will happen to them and will need to be reassured about this.

People often think that babies and toddlers will not benefit from explanations about what has happened:

It’s good to bear in mind that toddlers are able to understand a lot more than they can talk about.
Involving them in explanations to other family members, eg older siblings, may mean that they understand some of the information
They will certainly pick up on the atmosphere of ‘It’s OK to talk about it, we can handle it as a family’.

7 – 10 year olds

As children get older they can understand explanations that are a little more complicated.

This is because they are a bit more advanced in their development and have more experience of the world.
They know about ‘accidents’ and don’t always see things as happening because of something they did.
They often have more questions than younger children do.

11 and up

Older children and teenagers’ levels of understanding can be very similar to adults:

They have more knowledge of the world and life in general.
As a result they are aware not only of the obvious physical changes that occur after a spinal cord injury (eg, being unable to walk) but also of the feelings and emotions that the parent might have about what has happened to them.
Older children may want to borrow books or look on the Internet to find out more.