[Support for families with a parent diagnosed with cancer and children under the age of five--delineation of a counselling concept].

Parents of infants and young children, who have been diagnosed with cancer wish to protect their child from the emotional strains of their illness. They wonder, what the child can understand about the illness and how it is able to process or assimilate the experience of the illness. In fact, infants and young children are particularly sensitive to the degree of emotional burden and the mental state of their parents and will experience varying degrees of insecurity due to even small changes in their relationship with their parents. On the basis of psychological development parameters specific to this age group as well as scientific findings on risk and protection factors an integrated interaction based counseling approach was developed. Within this approach, support for the communication between parent and child in view of the specific strains of their illness, both non-verbal and in the child's early stages of verbal communication, is central. In the present article the counselling concept is described and illustrated by case studies. Application and limits are discussed.