Children unfazed that our cat has died

[Koolkatz]

My beloved cat died very unexpectedly in the night last week. He was a big part of our family. My 7 and 10 year old have barely reacted. My 10 year old cried initially, but since then they have shown no negative emotion. They haven’t asked questions about him, and if I bring him up they are able to laugh at happy memories. They immediately went back into their own happy routine.

I dont want them to be devastated but I did expect something more than this. He had been part of the family for 10 years so such little reaction is making me wonder if they didn’t have a bond.

Well you don’t actually know how you’d have felt, as you haven’t been in the situation.
I adored my childhood dog. I wasn’t inconsolable when he died. He was old and he’d lived a nice life.

But it can never apply to everyone. Everyone is different and react in different ways. There's no 'right way'. And there are always outliers.

We all have ideas about what would the most common reactions to traumas or how we'd react and project that on the situation and not everyone sees them as such or experienced them that way.

So I wasn't adopted but have met people who are and I would think based on how i'd feel and based on the research, that most people may have lots of questions about their birth family, would like to find birth parents or at least find out more about their heritage and ancestry. May feel incomplete in some way or have a sense of rejection but lots of people don't feel that and really aren't interested in their birth family because they don't think it's relevant to them or their lives.

Same as i've met people who lost a parent at a young age and felt that loss keenly through their lives and others who didn't. My exes Mum died of cancer when he was 5 and I assumed that was a huge loss for him, as did everyone else but once I got to know him better he said it hadn't been. She'd been ill for a long time so he didn't feel like he really had a Mum anyway and if anything, life got better after she died because it became more 'normal'. But he didn't tell many people that because theyd look at him like some kind of psychopath or just assume he hadn't 'dealt with it' when he had.

I met someone in adulthood who nearly died of childhood cancer and then had a lot of psychological therapy so I said 'well of course, hugely traumatic for a child to go though all that, facing mortality, you needed help to process it' and so on and he said no, the reason he had therapy was because he struggled not being special and he centre of attention anymore and being treated like a 'normal kid' was tough.

Same as some people are crushed by the death of a pet and others aren't.

You have absolutely no idea how you’d have reacted in a hypothetical scenario 😂

Kids are very black and white whilst also being quite egocentric. I've a terminal illness and all the literature says that whilst they know that death means the animal / person isn't coming back they don't hold the same emotional attachment as older children and teenagers do.

My 2 dc acted very differently when our cat died. One sobbed for days, the other held up the cat hair roller and said ‘well we won’t be needing this any more’.

Sorry, I should have said the immediate impact. She was not devastated in the way her older siblings were. The young child was barely fazed.She's now a late teen and it has definitely impacted her and no doubt always will.

Everyone is different yes, but there are commonalities. To say that a child has been unaffected by parental death is untrue - your ex may have felt unaffected by his mum dying but it will still have had an impact on him, he may not recognise the impact but we are all products of our life experiences. Our experiences in childhood shape the way in which we relate to the world and other people.

The example you give of the person surviving childhood cancer is another instance of how our experiences affect us - he didn’t experience the classic trauma symptoms that you understandably expected but his experience of surviving a life threatening illness had a huge effect on him, I.e. not feeling ‘special’ and struggling with not getting as much attention.

Not everyone who experiences childhood bereavement will suffer negative outcomes in adulthood but the odds of doing so are much, much higher.

That makes much more sense! Yes, young children can appear to be unfazed because they do not understand the finality of death, also children tend to live much more in the moment so they can be upset one minute and laughing and playing the next.

Normal op.

I didn’t have or show lots of emotion when i was nice and my great aunt died, even though i loved her and we were very close. I’m not sure why i didn’t feel much. It doesn’t mean i didn’t care. My DD’s middle name is after her.

My dad died almost 2 years ago, my DS cried his eyes out 2 weeks earlier when we told him my dad had cancer. But when he died he was sad but nothing like he had been. I spoke to my GP afterwards and he said as per PPs that children don’t think linear like adults. They aren’t thinking they won’t see the person again, or they will miss my graduation etc.

DS and my dad were really close and he still talks about him, so I dont think a lack of an expected adult response is indicative that they don’t care.

I understand you're really sad but it's not right to judge how other deal with bereavement or loss.

I was completely numb with shock when my dad died unexpectedly when I just turned 13. If anyone would've said they didn't think I seemed 'upset enough' I think I wouldn't told them to give their head a wobble. With hindsight.

@catslovehairtiesDid you mean to be so rude? It was the very reason my mother refused to allow it. And I think she knew me better than you do. So bog off.

It's not rude to say you don't know how you would have reacted to a situation you've never experienced 🙄

You are missing the point. I have kept cats for 35 years and each death was devastating to me. I rarely get offended in r l or on here but your childish response has really got to me. Bowing out now as don’t want to derail thread any further.
OP - am so very sorry and understand completely.

Children can be very matter of fact about death, even of humans. It can be very upsetting for adults when they barely seem concerned that an elderly grandparent dies but to the child they live in the now, they are thinking about the future

I was never devastated when I lost a pet either. I was sad in the moment and acknowledged it but that was it. I cared for them but I had never considered them "human".

Just because it was your beloved pet doesn’t mean it was theirs. When I was that age we had a cat that died, I couldn’t care less then nor now. I was devastated when another pet that I was actually close to died a few years later.