Children tend to worry about things that are concrete and visible, so when a parent has cancer, kids often focus on hair loss. Their parent looks very different and might be quite self-conscious about this. Debbie Watters, a comedian and primary school teacher in Elora, Ontario, has written a book with her sons capturing their experience of her chemotherapy-induced baldness.
The book is illustrated with photographs from before, during, and after chemotherapy and focuses on two parties the family held in the backyard: one a hair-cutting party, the other a hair-growing-back party. A few pages in the middle show Watters getting treatment for her cancer. These are particularly useful for children who haven’t had an opportunity to accompany their parent to the hospital.
Although it’s often helpful to children to be able to see other kids in the same situation as them, I think this book would have worked better if its approach had been more generalized. The use of photos instead of drawings makes it harder for children to imagine themselves in this scenario. Devoting over half of the pages to the hair-cutting party – an event that few families would hold – with photos of family friends and relatives also lessens the likelihood that children will identify with the story.
Despite these criticisms, reading the book with a parent or friend could help children ask questions and discuss cancer more freely. It could also enable them to see that they aren’t the only kid who has a parent with cancer.
Where’s Mom’s Hair? A Family’s Journey Through Cancer