How do I explain to my 3 year old that nana has to have heart surgery (bypass)? She sees my mom…

when i was 5 and my dad had leg surgery in another town 4 hours away and was gone for a week my mom said he went on vacation to hawaii to swim with dolphins 😐

she's doing her absolute best, or she's trying very hard to get better.

answer to the will she get better question.

I think you explained it perfectly. Simple and easy to understand and it's the truth.

I would just say her heart is damaged/not working properly and the doctors need to operate on it to repair it. I would steer clear of the broken heart thing since that is usually used in an emotional way. 'My heart is broken becausd my boyfriend broke up with me'

Your explanation is prefect.

Short, simple, and easy to understand.

If your son asks questions try not to go into too much detail.

"Nana will feel better once the doctors have a chance to fix her heart." *if he has been sick before you can use that as an connection.

"Doctors will fix her heart but she will be tired afterwards for a little while".

I agree with @beesknees, I would steer clear of the broken heart thing as that is used in an emotional way and you may confuse her. I would say she’s sick and she had to go so the drs could fix her. Also (God forbid) anything went wrong and your daughter would associate what happened to nana with a broken heart. Not to scare you but my Gma died after by pass surgery and I couldn’t imagine if we had told my son who was 4 at the time she was getting her broken heart fixed.

When my FIL had his stroke last summer, he told our 6 year old that his brain "had an explosion" but he was okay. My poor baby kept asking us if his brain would have a "consplosion" too, he was legit scared 😳 I second the advice @mimixtmn gave above.