Coping with cancer is hard enough when you’re an adult. It can be even more scary when you’re a child and your mom, dad, or grandparent gets sick.

To help families cope, the BC Cancer Agency, an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority, has created a new website called Cancer in my Family (www.cancerinmyfamily.ca), aimed at children aged eight to 12.

The website is a fun, interactive environment where children can feel safe, play games, create friendly characters – and at the same time explore how they’re feeling, and learn about cancer.

“It’s an opportunity for children to explore in an interactive way their thoughts, feelings and questions about cancer,” said Carly Fleming, a clinical counsellor at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver. “Kids process things through fun, art and play, so it will help them on that level.”

“It’s hard to see a parent sick,” said breast cancer survivor and mother Deanna Van Der Burg of Surrey. “It affects our children a lot more than you think, whether they talk about it or not.”

Van Der Burg initially struggled to find ways of helping her seven year-old son Ben to understand what was happening and to answer his many questions.

“A lot of the time I didn’t have answers for him. When you’re first diagnosed with cancer, you’re like a deer in headlights. The only person Ben had heard of with cancer was Terry Fox, who didn’t survive. Explaining that there are lots of different types of cancer was tough, too.”

Deanna and Ben were able to attend the Children’s Group offered by BC Cancer Agency’s Fraser Valley Centre in Surrey (also offered at the Agency’s Vancouver Centre). It was a positive experience for them, but not one that’s easily accessible to every family in B.C. The website offers the same kind of help, but is available to everyone.

Children can draw pictures on a virtual rock wall, which includes a feature showing the difference between a healthy cell and a cancer cell. Bouncing fruit and veggies, caught in a virtual basket, teaches children about the importance of a healthy diet. They can go on a scavenger hunt for a “feel-good” bag, create cute characters to be their buddies, and set the weather to reflect their mood.