# How to talk with your 3 yr old about surgery?



## lotta_earth (Sep 21, 2009)

To any other moms that may have had this experience I am wondering how to talk to your kid about having a surgery. My son needs to have a "minor surgery" and I figure I will say it a few days ahead and make it pretty matter of fact and not over dramatize it. Looking for words and wondering if your kids had questions about their bodies....as in what is wrong with me kind of questions and how you handled it?

Thanks so much,

Carlotta


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## HappyHappyMommy (Mar 9, 2009)

Hello there! I haven't dealt with this situation specifically, but in general, I've found that being matter of fact when explaining things really helps when medical issues come up. In terms of explaining what the issue is, if it were me, I'd probably say something like "Your XXX isn't helping your body the way that it should, so the doctors are going to open up your body and fix it." If you have a stuffed animal, you could do a little operation on the stuffed animal with your DS by opening up the stuffed animal, fixing something in the stuffing, and then sewing up the stuffed animal's incision. Hope that helps! And I hope the surgery goes very smoothly.

I'm going to move your post over to the Toddler Health forum as I think you'll get more replies there.


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