Difficult conversations about family with children

[CaffeinatedLondoner]

Hiya, not sure if I'm putting this in the right thread but has anyone got any resources for having difficult conversations about challenging topics with their young children? Long story short, my DD doesn't have either Granddad. My FIL died from a dr*g overdose and my dad left when I was little. They're starting to talk about family trees with nursery and I don't know of any resources to help me tackle these really big conversations at any stage with my child, let alone now. As an editor point, my FIL is easily googleable, which makes me even more anxious when she finally gets access to the Internet. Gah.

My MIL commited suicide when our youngest was 18months. My mum died from heart failure when she was 5. I told her about my mum as soon as it happened and said her heart was poorly and the doctors couldn't make her better. When she started asking questions about MIL I said she was poorly and the doctors couldn't make her better. She's still to young to fully understand suicide so I haven't elaborated on that.
I'm not sure if that would help you?

I'm so sorry to hear that, @Luvaplan 💔 that must have been so difficult. Oh gosh yeah I think I worded it incorrectly, I mean more I haven't really reflected that I would have to have these conversations with DD eventually (naïve/denial?!) and this v low-level prompt kind of jolted me into realisation that yeah, we have to talk about this one day.

Not directly related but do watch Inside Out/Inside Out 2 yourself and then with your child/ren at the appropriate time. They are excellent for understand emotions, how they make us feel and how to talk about them.

I don’t know really, my dd is 4. But what I would say is don’t over think it…… surely they don’t have to know the ins and outs of why they don’t have them, just that sadly they are in heaven. Yes they will likely ask questions and want more detail as they are older and that will be hard with a lot of emotions no doubt. I experienced this as a child myself and I was quite accepting of it when I was young, as I was a teenager and into adulthood some aspects were emotionally hard to deal with but I suspect that has a lot to do with my actual situation. My grandparents died of completely natural causes when I was 5-7, and I only knew my mother’s side as my father and his family never wanted anything to do with me. I also think society is much more diverse and accepting of different family set ups these days, where as in the 90’s especially where I grew up it was very uncommon to ‘not have a dad’ which as I grew and even when I had my own child became emotionally difficult

I wouldn't focus on why certain people aren't about but instead on how everyone has different families eg some have 2 mums, 1 grandad and 3 siblings and others have a mum and dad, 3 grannies and no siblings. There's lots and lots of books with examples of different family make ups that help normalise this too

I just told my children the age appropriate truth. I'm not sure why that would be hard? I think if you keep things completely quiet and unspoken then it becomes a secret and that makes things harder and a bigger deal than they need to be when things come to light.

By the age of 2 my daughter had been to more funerals than weddings.

We gave enough detail for her to know what was happening and what it meant but didn't over do explanations.

She's 6 now and we have had discussions about war, famine and disease. No topic is off the table we just keep the initial details light and then answer any questions in simple and age appropriate language. You don't have to explain everything in one conversation. Think of it as you giving her the building blocks over time that allows her to build a picture of the people in her life and not and why

Very understandable but it is always better if you share this with your child yourself. Hearing from some other source or keeping it hidden brings many questions for the child. You can use the language which is comprehendible for the child to understand the scenario.

I love this idea @Eyesopenwideawake - my students tell me about this all the time and rave about how important it is. Noted, thank you 💛

That helps more than you know, @didgeridid - my mum is also in heart failure so it's something that plays on my mind a lot as she totally adores her nanna. I'm so sorry about your mum, sending you love ❤ and I think you've taken an excellent approach. Thank you for sharing.

Amazing name, by the way! Thank you, this is so helpful, especially the idea of having a book that can mirror back similar families. And I think you're right, times have changed. My millennial brain needs to recalibrate (!)

Don't overthink it is gold. Thank you 💖

Sending love also, my mum was also Nanna ❤️

My grandfather was an awful man. An alcoholic who beat his wife and SA his children. I was NC for obvious reasons. When DD asked about him, I started with ‘he lived far away’ to ‘he wasn’t a nice man’ and then onto comparing him to people we’d see in films or dramas in TV as she got older. So I guess it was more of a slow drip feed of information as she got old enough to understand. She still doesn’t know about the SA but I will tell her when the time is right.

As adopters we are taught to give age appropriate truth and bring children up 'knowing'.
So in your case you start with 'grandad died' then later 'grandad took something he shouldn't have (drugs) and they killed him' and so on.
Don't leave upsetting surprises to the teen years.

Remember kids don’t have adult emotions. You can tell her families come in all different shapes. “ you dont have any grandads because they died before you were born. But you have me, daddy, auntie Sarah etc”. That’s all a 4 year old needs.

drugs come up on the year 5/6/7 curriculum so depending on maturity at that time, I would probably use that as a segway into more details and look up the press together.