The closer someone who has HIV/AIDS is to children, the more

The closer someone who has HIV/AIDS is to children, the more impact learning about the person's illness or death will have:

AIDS has begun to produce a generation of orphans: thousands of children are not infected but are losing their mothers and fathers to illness, disability and death from the growing epidemic.

In a school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, for example, youngsters whose parents are dead or dying meet in weekly support groups. An 8-year old boy came to one session clutching a photograph of his father in a coffin. This is show-and-tell in the age of AIDS.4

Support children throughout the loved one's entire process of dying.

On one hand, it is wrong not to tell the children a parent or loved one is dying of AIDS. On the other hand, do not be so blunt that each day children think the loved one will die that day. Tell them who will take care of them if a parent is dying. Truthfully address any questions if they have another parent whom they fear losing.