I have a 3 year old and in the last year and a half we have lost my mum, my nan and most recently, our cat just over a month ago.
I couldn't hide any of this from him as obviously I've been quite upset and I felt it was best to just tell him in a way he could understand. I am not religious so I don't feel comfortable talking about heaven so I have answered as many questions as I can and of course he has a lot of questions. Basically, what we have talked about is:
- When people or animals get old or very very sick they sometimes can't get better because x is wrong with them and they die even though we tried very hard to make them better.
- Sometimes people just get a little bit poorly but they get better so being poorly doesn't mean you will die.
- It is very sad when someone dies but the person who is dead is not sad because they aren't sick or old anymore but they can't come back to us because they can't stop being dead.
- We have also had a walk around the local church yard and I explained that the graves were were people were buried, like at my mum and nan's funerals and like how we buried the cat in the garden, and the gravestones are to tell us who is buried there.
So I hope I have managed to field most of his questions without frightening him about death, but he is still talking about the cat every day. He isn't always sad about it, although today he said he wanted the cat back. Sometimes he tells me that he saw the cat this morning or that she is doing x right now. I don't know if he is pretending or if he is trying to deal with the loss in his own way.
Today when he came out of pre-school he said he had been telling his friends that the cat had died and then told me about things that I know he did with the cat on the morning she died, so I think he is still thinking about it a lot.
So sorry for the long post and I hope it makes sense, but I'm basically just wondering if you think I've explained it ok to him and do you think there is anything else I can do to help him grieve? He's so little to be so sad for this long.