7 year old not allowed to attend a funeral.

[Rhian1]

Hi Mumsnet, long time lerker - 1st time posting.

My granddad passed away last week. We have talked about this very openly with our seven year old son, who is quite (i think) emotionally mature for his age.

We discussed the funeral, talked about what to expect and what will happen on the day, I believe he should attend.

However, after speaking to my grandmother (deceased spouse), she is amendment that he will not be allowed to go under any circumstances and if we do take him he will be asked to leave, even if that means me leaving as well.

I have tried talking to her, I believe this isn't her decision to make.

The funeral is some 120 miles away from our home, we have no options of childcare and I wish my husband to attend (for his own personal respects, and selfish reasons that I would like his support).

What do I do now?! I have prepared my son for this, how can I possibly tell him he cant go? Or that none of us are going? I really dont want to make a scene at funeral.

Rock (me) hardplace.

Please help!

It's y our grandmothers call. She doesn't want a child there as that is what she believes. She is grieving why are you making this more difficult for her. Just tell your child that it's a non child funeral and he can go to see the grave after the funeral.

So what will your grandmother do about random people who tend to turn up at funerals. ( my mil is a professional funeral goer she goes the funeral of any slight acquaintance, my grandmother was the same). One of them could bring a child.=

Is anybody actually that crass that they would take a random child to an unknown funeral. Thankfully I think not

At 7 years old, I would have wanted to go if it meant having a day off school. However, if it fell on a weekend then I'd rather have gone to football practice.

You can teach them about death in many ways. Awareness of where meat comes from is a good way to do this.

Just accept your gran's wishes and get your son to write down what he wants to say to your grandad.

Anyway, going to a church and explaining Christianity is more likely to confuse his understanding of death.

I didn't say a random child to an unknown funeral but if a person who knew someone had dies decided to go to the funeral they might well have to take their child/grandchild with them

Lots of people just turn up to funeral services of people they know.

The funeral is for those left behind! The deceased is not there!

It is just one if those things. You want him there but the person closest to the deceased , who is making the arrangements doesn't. You just explain to DS and involve him in a different way.

I have been through the same. My Aunt died a couple of years back. My grandmother was adamant that dd should not attend. I respected her wishes then. It's my grandmothers funeral next week and I wont take dd either. She wouldn't have wished it. Though to be fair, school stuff and the sheer cost disinclines me to insist.

Personally I think that children SHOULD be included. We have huge issues in our family where unpleasantness and upset is brushed under the carpet. Dd went to her uncle's funeral, and I also took her to see my nan as she was dying. She is 10 and coping well with it all.

Ds(10)'s gran passed away late last year. Ds was very close to her and in my mind he would have coped with the funeral. i found out his cousins weren't going and in the end I decided not to take him either.

I am so glad he didn't go, it was a lovely funeral but I surprised myself on how upset I was, especially the powerful emotions when the coffin was being brought in, and I thought at the time I was glad ds was not there so I could concentrate on my own mourning and not worry about ds.

I was also glad that other mourners did not have to curb their grief due to worry about a child being there.

If i hadn't had a recent funeral, where I had this in my mind, i would probably agreed with you your ds should go (if your gm also allowed it) but now IMHO young children don't need funerals to understand and not be frightened of death, parents can manage that at home. I also believe it s better for older children and adults if there are no young children there.

I think it's shocking that you'd feel hard done by in all this OP.

I've just arranged 2 funerals for my brother and if anyone had politely asked to bring children I'd politely say no. If anyone had badgered me and had other people also ask I'd have lost my shit. If anyone saw fit to disregard my wishes I doubt I'd have spoken to them again.

I know a lot of parents think their children are emotionally advanced, but a 7 year old is a child. For me it just isn't an environment for children to be in, I'd be wound up by children, either because they're being typical children who don't understand mood and context of emotion etc or because of anticipating it. I needed to be completely free to deal with my emotions without those distractions. I'm not the sort of person to be cheered by a child handing out tissues and making remarks about being happy, I'm the sort of person to be unbelievably irritated by it. I would never allow something at a funeral that would be likely to irritate people in that way.

As well as his 2 funerals, my brother also had a Buddhist service at the temple, which was sort of sprung on us extremely last minute. Their way of doing things is as far from mine as possible. My brother was a single parent to my nephew, who is 9 and autistic. I love my nephew more than anything in this world, and him being there brought me unquantifiable comfort. Because he didn't understand what was happening though, him being there annoyed my mum. Very different circumstances because it was his father, and he had more right to be there than any of us, but my mum was visibly upset at him being there.

Allot of posters are talking about the widow being 'controlling' and hasn't the right to 'decide who gets to go and who doesn't'.

For goodness sake it's not as if she's saying uncle John cant come because she doesn't like his accent, and cousin Christine cant come because of the incident in 1979 ... she's saying no young children.

In her eyes this is for their sake. She probably doesn't want them upset. Whether you think it's misguided is one thing - but it's from the best of intentions. She's not being 'controlling'

I come from a very small family and didn't go to a funeral till I was 20!

I was 10 when my paternal grandma died, we were very close, 5 minutes walk away and I saw her nearly every day.
My Mum was of the mind that children should not attend funerals. I think my brother and I must have gone to school as normal that day.

I'm glad that I didn't go at 10. To see my Mum, Dad and others upset would have been very distressing.

Of course this was 35 years ago and things have changed but in this case you should respect her wishes. Sorry for your loss.

When my Mum died earlier this year my 2 older granddaughters came to the funeral, but not the 7 year old one. I and her parents thought that she would not understand even though she had been told all about it. We wanted to go through the service without having to worry about her shouting out and asking lots of questions etc. But she then came to the funeral tea afterwards. I was 7 when my Dad died and I did not go to his funeral.

I didn't say a random child to an unknown funeral but if a person who knew someone had dies decided to go to the funeral they might well have to take their child/grandchild with them

I have thankfully never heard of anyone taking a child along to the funeral of a bare acquaintance etc without first checking with the family. Never. I think that analogy is hardly helpful under the circumstances and I dont think it's something that the OP's grandmother needs to worry about

However, let's say that someone else decides to be rude and inappropriate and do this. Does that mean that the OP should be too? I don't think so

I think the thing that I actually find most upsetting about this is the fact that the poor grandmother had to call the OP personally to tell her not to bring her son. Sounds like the vicar and the DM basically intimated that the OP wouldn't take no for an answer from them

I like the helium balloon idea, that would involve DH and Ds but away from the service, thus respecting your nan's wishes.

You are massively overthinking this, and you are in danger of causing a rift between you and your great-grandmother. You say you're not badgering her, but you say in your OP that you've tried talking to her, and later that your mother has tried talking to her. She is newly widowed and has had two people trying to change her mind about something that is clearly important to her, while she is arranging the funeral of the person she spent her life with.

While it is nice that your son wants to say goodbye to his great-grandfather, surely his wishes must be ranked considerably below those of the woman who has lost her husband of many years.

Just tell him that a decision has been made that the funeral is going to be only for adult family members. If he's mature enough to understand the purpose of a funeral, then he's mature enough to understand that it's a difficult time for the adults involved.

Whether you agree or not, she is the person organising the funeral, and the person who has known the deceased for the longest. The only gracious thing to do is to say 'yes, that's fine, I'll explain to him.'

There's no reason why your husband and son can't drive you there and go and do something else, perhaps with an element of saying goodbye.

I would genuinely be astonished if a random attendee at a funeral decided to bring their child along. That would be incredibly crass and inappropriate.

My son is autistic. When he attended my sisters funeral I checked in advance that my mother and my neice and nephew agreed that he should be there, which they did.
It's just about consideration.
I had lost my sister. IMHO my mother and her children had lost more.
It's not easy but one has to accept that there is a point at which someone else's loss is greater than your own. Even if you are feeling lost yourself.

I don't thin it is appropriate for a 7 yr old to attend this funeral and however mature you think your ds is it will be an unnecessary distress for him.
Your attitude to your poor grandmother is bad. She has lost her husband and you think she has no right to say no children???

When we were in this situation we took dcs to visit the grave the next day.
Let the adults grieve and stop thinking about yourself.

kungpu Exactly!

My 2 year old went to FIL's funeral in April. The funeral 'people' actually said they enjoy children being there and it 'lightens the mood' a bit which helps people to grieve, yes, but to celebrate a person's life and allows 'us' to see that life goes on - certainly in the the 'young blood' that is there.
It was the best decision we made. He got up and went to sit with my mum (his other grandma) and 'played' with the books and wasn't still but certainly wasn't running around.
Whereas you would have to respect the wishes of the person who is organising the funeral (grandad's spouse), I do NOT agree that children so not need to see adults cry or grieve. It's the British stiff upper lip and a MASSIVE reason why children grow up emotionally immature and unable to express themselves appropriately because they are taught at an early age that grief is private and crying is 'not to br displayed'. Why should we shield children from an event that is so very much part of the life cycle?? I would rather my child grow up with a healthy repect for life AND death and not to think that grief and crying should be doen 'behind closed doors' and in private. I would hate to think my child was growing up being made to think that he should not express his feelings with a few tears. That is cruel and harmful.

Families are all different. In my family children never, ever go to funerals. Tbh I'd not even entertained the idea that they would under the age of, say, 14.

However ds had attended 2 funerals before he was 1 because in dps family EVERYONE attends.

I go with the wishes of the grieving 'chief mourners'. Anything else is unthinkable.

I don't know if anyone has said this (read the OP's posts but not everything else) but if the funeral is in a church then anyone can go.

If I'm standing back and not getting emotionally involved - yes, of course your grandmother is the 'mourner-in-chief', but I really don't think she is fair to say that others can go to mourn as well, in fact I think she's bang out of order. She is excluding members of her husband's family.

I really don't know what, if anything, you can do - you can't badger her or demand she changes her mind. Have your parents been able to shed any light on why she wants this?

Really. It must be an area or generational thing then. It's very common amongst people i know for people to see a death in the local paper & turn up to the funeral.

I think it's a bit bonkers myself (though I did turn up to the funeral if a school friends mum who I hadn't seen for years as I thought I'd like to pay my respects.

It's definatly seen as being respectful to attend a funeral if you knew someone b

Really. It must be an area or generational thing then. It's very common amongst people i know for people to see a death in the local paper & turn up to the funeral.

It's very common where I live too. In fact, there were a number of such mourners today and they were very welcome. Thankfully all were polite enough not to bring children

My parents on the other hand went to a funeral in Wales where mum was the only female there, even the deceased daughter didn't go.

OP, in the circumstances I'm sure a school friend's mom would take your DS for the time required. I'd do this in a heartbeat for any of the school friends, or actually for anybody I knew.
Or would your in laws mind him for you?

Then your DH can drive you and be there to support you during the funeral.