Cancerbackup: Children & teenagers

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Children, teenagers and hair loss

Many children are not too worried by their hair loss and may be proud of their bald heads. However, if they do want to cover up, wigs can be very natural looking. There are many hats, caps, scarves or bandanas that they can wear. If a child needs treatment from time to time over a few years, they will probably need a new wig every time as their head grows. Their hair will grow back once their treatment has finished.

The Little Princess Trust is a charity providing free high quality wigs and hairpieces for children who have suffered hair loss due to cancer treatment.

If you are a teenager, having a change in your appearance can be very upsetting. There are many natural-looking wigs and other ways to cover hair loss.

If you would like to speak to other teenagers with cancer you can contact the Teenage Cancer Trust.

There are also many websites for teenagers with cancer – some of these have chatrooms where you can talk about your feelings with other teenagers. You can also read or share stories on our TIC website www.click4tic.org.uk

On some websites you can upload a photo of yourself and then change your hairstyle or put on a hat, or draw in different eyebrows etc. This can be fun and can let you experiment with your appearance to see what suits you best.


Content last reviewed: 01 January 2007
Page last modified: 14 January 2009

Get support

Look for other people in the same situation on our What Now? community - read their blogs or talk to them in our chat rooms.

Find out about other ways to get support on the main Macmillan website.

Go to TIC, Cancerbackup's teenage cancer website