when did your child start talking about death and what did you tell them?

[souvenir]

Dd's nearly 4 and has lately become very concerned with death. Mostly it's fear of me dying and more generally who will look after her if something happens to me. This evening she talked about Grandma being 'old' and said 'but she's not going to die is she?' so I said 'not yet, no, but she will one day' which led to the terrible tears that emerge whenever this topic comes up. Tonight then I talked to her about Grandma going to 'heaven' in a rather ad-hoc way and I wondered what other mums do / say when faced with this problem?

TIA

interesting points about being worriers yourselves. in contrast i'm actually not a huge worrier (and neither were my mum and dad). we all had/have a very positive outlook on life and we're very much of the school of 'oh well it'll all come out in the wash'.

dh and i have tried our best to convey this to dd, although her thoughts and fears about death have happened anyway. i think (and dd's pre-school teacher confirmed this) that it's a stage many children go through but it doesn't have to be a big deal hopefully; it's a stage that will pass. let's face it none of us are very good at facing up to death in this country/culture and it's a bit of a taboo to talk about it openly as it plays on our own fears as well. that's where i somewhat envy very religious people who have an unwavering faith - it must be lovely to be that confident of where you're going/what happens to you!

i think it's healthy for children to see you are concerned about issues but i also think they need to see how you cope with these things as well. it must be very unsettling for a child to see their parents unable to calm themselves or deal with situations without there being a 'happy' solution. of course there sometimes isn't a happy solution but i think kids need to see some sort of a line drawn under issues. e.g. there's a big difference between hearing a parent say 'oh god we're overdrawn again, and we've no money' and 'oh dear, we've run out of money this month. we'll have to make sure we don't spend as much next month'. (something dd will be very used to hearing at the moment now my maternity pay has run out!!)

Jamiesam, please don't take this as criticism, but the 'dying is like falling asleep forever' explanation is one to avoid, IME. This is what I was told as a small child, and I just somehow got sleep and death mixed up in my mind, and found going to bed terrifying for ages in case I died in my sleep.

I was a very scaredy-cat child though, other kids may not take it so much to heart!

Souvenir, my dd is only 2.4 and not yet on to death, IYSWIM, but....I clearly remember being a child and obsessing about my father dying. With years of hindsight, I know now that it was mostly to do with my fear of him leaving/not being looked after when I was older - just like you suspect with your little girl.

Have there been any changes, or losses (my friend's 3yr old went into deep grief at all partings for a year after losing her favourite soft toy, and refused to say 'goodbye' to anyone) recently? Or maybe she's just moving into a more independent stage and feeling the loss of babyhood?

I agree with most of what has been said here and my approach has been not to shy away from discussing. my dd is 3 and i wasn't planning to talk about death with her yet but I've been preempted by the odd thing she has experienced - watching a sixties film in which dreadfully unlifelike dinosaur is killed by awful caveman. 3 or four days of 'but will the dinosaur wake up' etc. To more personal stuff like 'why isn't there a great grandpa?' 'cos he's dead' 'why is he dead?' etc etc.

Recently was looking at old photo albums which contain my sister who died at 7. She wanted me to identify people in photos, hadn't ever told her about my sister - thought would tackle later - she was quite gripped by the idea that a child in a photo could be dead so there were quite a few questions.

Anyway my point is that i believe that my dd at 3 is too young to really grasp the concept of death and loss and so is not ready to really be upset by it. I imagine in a year or so (like your dd souvenir) she will become more upset as it dawns on her. I would have thought that's totally normal although some kids may be more sensitive to it than others. I still have trouble dealing with the fact that I might die/or loved ones and I'm 33.

I am also an atheist so dont talk about heaven though dh is lapsed catholic and his parents refer to it with her. I just say 'some people believe x' and try to be scientific about it.

I'm similar to you Manitz in that my DS asked about it at barely three, I thought I might have a bit more time to prepare, but no!

His great grandad died, but we didn't sit him down and tell him immediately, just told him the next time he talked about his gt grandad a few days later. We just said that he was 'all finished' and that people do finish when they are very very old. Haven't had to deal with the idea of young people/children dying yet luckily....but he does talk about whether I will die. He doesn't yet seemed to have made the connection with it happening to him one day though....

I don't want to tell him things that I don't know are true - so never mention heaven. He came home from pre-school talking about god and heaven though, so I simply said that some people believe in this but no-one knows for sure. He was happy with that.

I have given dd a concept of heaven, or rather a lovely place that people go to when they're dead and we can still 'speak to them' when we miss them. It slightly backfired as I made it sound so lovely she said 'let's go there now, mum!' and I said 'no, not until we die' at which point she burst into tears again ...

oops souvenir

I just don't feel able to do this with my son because I don't believe it. I am not able to still speak to people when they die so I wouldn't like to tell my son that we can...though I will tell him that people stay in our memory so continue on in that way, and also close family like parents stay with us because they are part of our being anyway.

My DD has spoken about it since 3yo, when my Dad died.

I told her what I believe, that it means I won't see him again. She's brought it up occasionally since and said 'what happens when people die' and I told her, 'no-one really knows'.

Honesty the best policy imo.

Are we always brutally honest with our kids though? There are a lot of areas where fantasy and reality are very blurred in a child's mind, probably as a way of helping them understand things that are troubling. Feisty, if I said to my dd 'no-one really knows' she'd be devastated. She's seeking an answer to something that's frightening her. I can't say I'm an atheist but neither have I a real sense of religion in myself. But in the same way I play out Father Christmas type things and let her believe that in her story books animals can speak etc. I've thought this was the kindest way to help her. She'll make up her own mind what she believes when she's older anyway.

sparklemagic, when I said 'speak to them' I meant in our minds and hearts rather than aloud. I told her we wouldn't be able to see or hear them.

My children haven't really experinced a loss in their lives yet although they do know my dad died when ds was too young to remember.

I have told them that yes, I will die but it won't be until they are much much older and have families themselves and children to love like I love them. It's fudging the issue I know....

I am not religious but, usefully, their grandparents are, so they know about heaven and that some people believe in it. they also know about reincarnation and that some epople belive that. I have explained to them that I believe that when I die I will still be in their hearts and in their memories and they will always know and feel how much I love them.

Death has been a big thing for us since our best friends lost their 10 month old daughter last July. DD (7) and DS (4) have a good understanding. We are Christians and have told them that Aaliyah is in Jesus' arms, in heaven. It has prompted many questions including some really bizarre ones. All answered. They really get that dead means gone and not coming back and also that it makes people really sad and cry alot. We weren't able to shield them completely as it was so awful. When my PIL's cat died a couple of months ago, DD was unfazed, didn't even cry and just said it wasn't nearly as bad as when Aaliyah died. I am sad that she has this in her life experience already. She thinks Mummy and Daddy only cry when babies die. She also understands the injustice of a baby death as opposed to the fact that my Grandad may die as he is 92! She understands well the circle of life - good old Lion King! I am no expert but the children are content with the whole idea of death.

Souvenir - we all know our own kids best, I guess.

You're lucky, snuffy, that they take the idea so well.

I'm curious though, Feisty, if you would tell your kids, like Puddle, that only older people die, and that we will live long enough to see them grow up? I'm not meaning to be at all critical or aggressive here by the way, I'm interested to see how other people handle it because it seems to me in one way or another we tell 'white lies' in order to take the blow away. Do you see what I mean? I haven't told dd I won't die, I've said we all will die but hopefully not for a long time. Maybe that's where I went wrong?

I agree with you, Souvenir. My kids inevitably asked if any of their significant adults were going to die and I took the honest approach - we all die at some point but hopefully not for a long while yet. They think it is ok when old people die.

strangely after posting earlier, we had a little death episode in the car. just the usual with questions about why is great grandpa dead?

• cos he's old.
• why did he die?
• cos when you are old things stop working and you die.
• does that mean he couldn't drive?
• yes because his eyes had started to fail.

Odd thing is that she has never met him or seen a picture of him. guess it's cos she sees my gran a lot and she's the only very old person we know.

anyway i haven't delved at all and am in two minds about honesty. I don't want to sheild my kids or lie to them. i think that the whole circle of life thing is good and although I have fear myself I think even the atheist view of life and death is a good one. if she asks i tell her that you don't hurt when you are dead and that people will miss you. But so far she's quite easy to distract. We did have a wehre do babies come from the other day though! I said mummys have eggs inside them to which she said 'and they hatch then?'. This could backfire a lot.

I really don't know what to say souvenir aobut your dd. I would expect that it is a phase though and i wouldn't get too worried about your dd. IMO the more matter of fact and blase you can appear maybe the better they will take it. If it appears that you are concerned they might realise that it's a thing to worry about.

DS1 has experiences our cat die at age 4 (his age, not the cat's!) and my dad die last year, when DS1 was 5.5. He asked a lot of questions about both and has sad it is very sad etc but thankfully I think he was too young to understand about grief. He was very upset about the tsunami though and especially about children dying, he was 4.9 at the time.

He asks about Dad in a very matter of fact way and knows that his ashes are on top of the cubpoard in nanny's dining room!

My friend's DD who's just 6 recently went through a period of months when she was scared to go to sleep in case her mum and dad died before she woke up. They think it was triggered by the death in a car crash of her great aunt, who the whole family were very fond of.

Think the best way to deal with questions is to be as honest as you can without being too graphic. I tell my DS his granddad and his cat have gone to heaven - becuase that's what I believe.

Dd was 3 and a bit when she met a new girl at nursery who's mum had recently died unexpectedly. Not much later her own dad (my dh) became suddenly very seriously ill and we were prepared for his possible death. Since then another 2 school friends have lost parents and a teacher dropped down dead in front of the class at the age of 26.
So dd has a very unbalanced view of deaths. She only knows of 2 people who died old (her great grandmas). That said, she has coped very well and is not scared nor preoccupied by death. We always answered her questions as honestly as we could. We explained that after death some people believe they go to heaven, but even if you don't believe that, you can be sure its a world without pain, a nice place to be.

wow posey what a horrible series of events . i expect it all becomes a bit surreal after a while, as it's too much to take on board fully (for adults as well as children).

i'm really not very sure at all about what i believe as far as religion goes but, like souvenir, my dd would be very upset if she thought there was just a 'void' or if i told her that no-one knows what happens whe you die. i might tell her that when she's a bit older but at 4 i think it's a bit much for her to accept.

we've told dd that most people don't die until they're old, but we've also said that accidents can happen to people as well as illnesses. we had to explain about accidents because of my mum who died in a horse-related accident. in some ways you could say that i'm wrong telling her that i'm not going to leave her any time soon (ie die prematurely) because obviously that might not be true; i could get run over by a bus tomorrow, but i don't see any benefit in telling 'the whole truth' to her at this stage as she's anxious/uncertain enough already. my priority at the moment is to try to introduce ideas stage by stage without causing her any unnecessary worry.

[and of course we can't be 100% honest with our kids! when dd asked me how her sister got into my tummy, did i tell here that 'daddy put his erect penis....' etc bloody hell no! so why should i tell her what a strange, frightening and mysterious thing death is just yet?!!]

Posey, how awful, all those young people dying suddenly. How did the 26-year-old teacher suddenly keel over??? In a way, I wonder if its almost 'normality' will help your dd? Mine hasn't experienced anyone she knows dying, she's just frightened of it happening, probably because she feels she can't control it - she's a bit of a little control freak at the best of times!

I think it's right to try to be 'matter of fact' about it, definitely, and try not to come across as overly concerned myself.

Souvenir - the teacher was reading a story to her class and fell off the chair. To start with they thought it was her play acting (she was a comical teacher) but after a while (no-one really knows how long) they ran to get help as she wasn't getting up. She was dead almost certainly dead by this point but the kids still believe she died in hospital. It was sudden adult death syndrome.

That's truly awful, posey, I've never heard of such a thing before. How upsetting for the children, but they were very clever to go and get help. How old were they at the time?

sorry to interupt, just thought I'd add that my dd (4, also preoccupied with death) seemed to find comfort in us pointing to her age on one of those number posters and then us showing our current ages, then pointing to what we percieve to be 'old age' and when we consider an older person might die. A visual thing I spose. Still doesn't solve sudden death, but its a start.

The children were y2, so 6-7 year olds.

teatime, which number charts do you mean?

I had a minor breakthrough tonight with dd. She did something a bit naughty and I had to tell her off and she said 'do you still love me now?' I said 'yes' then she said 'but you won't be able to love me if you're dead' so I leapt in with 'but love NEVER dies' she looked at me with bright eyes 'no?!' and somehow that thought that she'll be loved eternally seemed to satisfy her. Briefly. It all kicked off again at bedtime ... Sigh ...