[Resiliency supports: a possible tool for helping children when a parent suffers from cancer].

Contradictory results were published on the existence of children's distress when a parent suffers from cancer. On the other hand, the long term traumatic impact of the disease, and in particular of the loss of a parent, is more documented and consensual. The resiliency theory is based on the observation of people having a "favorable evolution" although they lived serious traumatic events. It questions the factors contributing to what we could describe as a "good adjustment" rather than the negative consequences of an event. Some authors suggested the founder role of a triple landmark offered by the parental figures to the child since its very young age for establishing a capacity to resiliency: the quality of interpersonal bonds, the reference to stated and respected rules and the attribution of a meaning and an orientation to one's own existence. The theory of resiliency offers some tracks for supporting the best the adaptive capacities of children and the whole family facing the cancer of a parent. According to this current of thought, supporting the parents in their role of parents seems one of the best ways, in first intention, to support the children themselves.