How much do 7 year olds understand

[goggles]

Helping my friend with the unexpected death of her husband last Wednesday. I worry about all the children - but especially 11 year old and 7 year old. 11 year old is talking, thinking about what has happened. Easier to talk around the funeral etc. 7 year old not able to see it as real I think - but what do they understand? She didn't see her dad in hospital at the end nor did anyone have chance to tell her in advance. She cried at the time and since but not sure its sunk in. School have offered some sort of counselling - does anyone know what that means? How should we talk to her about the funeral etc?

The website you need is called:

Winston's Wish

It is a specialist charity working with bereaved kids - lots of great stuff on their site.

By seven they can understand the permanence of death, but it may take a while to sink in. My DCs were 8 and 4 when DH died - DS, who was 8, got it immediately, but I had to keep explaining to 4-year-old DD for a while that Daddy wouldn't be able to come back to life. They both went to the funeral, and in fact DD, who is now 8, suddenly started talking about it the other day, so she was obviously aware of what was going on and took in a lot more than I thought at the time.

I second Winston's Wish as a great resource - the website has lots of good advice about talking to children about death. They only do direct counselling in a certain geographic area, but they do have a phone helpline.

Your friend might also find the Merry Widow website helpful, if she hasn't found it already.

exexpat - how do you post a website link on MN? I can't seem to do it?

Follow the directions to the right of the box you type your message in - instructions on links are at the bottom, underneath all the smiley directions.

But basically you cut and paste the URL and enclose it in double square brackets like that.

Links The simplest way to insert a link is to enter the web address (URL) surrounded by and . So type http://www.mumsnet.com { no spaces - I added those to make it clearer } to display a link like www.mumsnet.com. If you want your link to display text other than the web address itself, leave a space after the address then add the text before the ]]. So "Look at this page", would display "Look at this page."

Thanks