Toddlers & topic of death. Gah.

[BoyMeetsWorld]

Please lend advice / a shoulder to cry on.

Took 3.5 year old DS to the museum today. Wall-to-wall taxidermy (obviously we hadn't realised this when deciding to go). Tried to make light of it all & just turn it into educational session of looking at all the types of animals.

However, this eve the inevitable questioning started at bedtime. Including:

• were they ever free? Will they ever be free again?
• why do they have to get old?
• if I am Superman and run really really fast can I bring them back again?
• how old are they? When were they alive? How old were they when they died?
• how did they die? And the worst one of all.... *Do people get older? People don't die, do they?

O.M.G.

I wasn't prepared for half of those questions. Got by with a mix of evasion, diluted answers. Put him to sleep with a kiss, walked out & burst into tears. Poor little mite. How do you answer those questions??? :(

We're sticking to zoos & live animals for the foreseeable future but I fear the damage is done...

Bless him. Maybe he'll have forgotten all about it tomorrow? If he's still asking questions I'd just be factual and not dwell as far as possible. I don't have a toddler (DD isn't talking yet!) but I do remember clearly my first day at my first teaching job where a girl (who was also new) came and said to me 'do you go to hell if you commit suicide? My friend's mum just killed herself.' This was at a Catholic school and I'm not a Catholic. Bloody awful conversation but I stuck to the facts, that different people have different beliefs and then trying to make sure she was ok. I think conversations about death don't ever get easier but it's good if he feels he can ask scary questions and trust you for the answers!

Go and have a cup of tea

I say ''people die when it's the end of their life". I try and avoid only associating death with getting old, as then dd got very concerned that everyone who is old is about to pop their clogs.

it is about this age that they really start to ask those questions. Something would have made him wonder.

I am afraid I went down the route of talking about heaven, in which I don't really believe, as I couldn't bear to share the truth. Which says a lot about my own attitude to death tbh.

barnet that is how we dealt with it too at the toddler stage...

When they got a bit older (8ish) my dad - their Grandpa - died, so we had "the big talk" - we are not "believers" so talked along the lines of everyone is made of atoms - all the atoms that make us have been used before and before and before - maybe in a person, or a butterfly, or a rock - way back to the start of the universe when they were all stardust.....

The atoms never die, they never go away they get used again and again and again - FOREVER - so everything that makes you will carry on for ever.

(cue a morbid talk about worm food, chickens eating worms, us eating chickens and hence eating grandpa....)

You're probably facing your own feelings about your own mortality there too op which makes the subject of death even more difficult. I have always tried to be factual. Things die. It's very sad at the time. But things have been dying since the world began. If they are pressing for what death is like ask them what it was like for them before they were born. Explain that that is what it is like after. Nothing scary. So far these honest discussions seem to have worked and my dc rarely dwell on it.

I wish I had thought about it and done what ByTheWay1 and headinhands have done.

I get lots of questions about the mechanics of heaven, which I have somehow to deal with.

We've recently had a crematorium built near to us which has instigated lots of death based conversations!

We have 2 ds's aged 4.2 and 6.10.

We've talked about how people's bodies can get so poorly that they can't go on living. We've explained how this usually happens when people get old but that it can happen to young people and children too.

We're not aethiests, but also don't hold any particular strong beliefs. We've explained that lots of people think that after the body has died, the bit that makes you you carries on to somewhere else and that some people think that that place is called heaven.

They know that after death, some people's bodies are buried in a box (coffin) in the ground and that other peope's bodies are burnt and turned into dust in a hot oven (brings us back full circle to the crematorium being built).

I had no intention of them knowing so much about death at their ages, but circumstances have lead us to this point and we would not lie to them, preferring instead to try to explain things to them in a way that they can understand.

Thanks all...feeling a bit more composed now! Just wish id had a ready prepared answer!

barnet - I really like your suggestion about 'people die when their life is over'. That is exactly what I needed to stop him being scared that he will die any time soon because he's obsessed with getting bigger & older at the moment. So thank you for that, I'll definitely be using it.

headinhands yes I think you're right. Part of why it got to me is my own dad died when DD was 9 months & I've never been able to explain to him who Grandpa was or what happened to him because of this issue of death. I have my own still v raw feelings of grief about that, plus unresolved memories of myself when I was small & used to lie awake scared about the fact everyone was going to die & we can't control it. I've always been a bit morbid. Hopefully DS will not be too affected by this & I'm projecting more onto him than necessary

I'm sorry to hear about your Dad, Boymeets. I also used to lay awake in bed worrying about death when I was little. I think my fear of death was partly responsible for me being a Christian when I was younger. There are some fantastic children's books that allow children and their parents to think about death and loss and grief if you did want to create an opportunity for your kids to talk about it?

I haven't read any other responses to this as I would like to give my honest answers (I will rea after posting).

Our DD1 is 3.6yo and the topic of death has arisen from the context of Disney films (i.e Mother Gothel's death in 'Tangled'; Flynn 'dying' but coming back) and also from me talking about my beloved (and deceased) grandparents.

It's not easy, and you can't go into anything too metaphysical, abstract, or stark. I respect Atheism and Atheistic perspectives, but this age is not the one to talk about death being the absolute end. Death is a kind of end; one way to get to another, quite beautiful place.

For 'baddies' in films, we tell her that they've "met a sticky end". So, they've gone and they're definitely not coming back.

For people, it's different. They've definitely gone to a place called Heaven (not trying to sway to Christianity, but I think this idea is a calming concept to a you'd child. No Hell!) Heaven is awesome: you can do what you like, it's up in the sky, it's lots of fun. But the drawback is that we can't visit (it's further away than the moon, you know) and when you die, there is no coming back.

When you're dead, you're dead. But it's okay. Nothing to be scared of.

It's quite black-White at the moment. Her fragile eggshell mind can't take complexities. So I'm glossing over a lot to try and make it truthful, but age-appropriate.

I hope that helps a bit,

MammaT x

Thanks all.

And thanks MammaT - I feel a bit like this is the right route for us too. I am definitely not Christian, but equally definitely not atheist - simply not a clue which could again account for my discomfort with the whole 'void' of death. But I strongly agree that toddlerhood is too young to have these feelings of void. I don't want to lie to my DS & tell him he'll never die when he asks directly. But equally I don't want it to be scary & uncertain for him...concepts of Heaven do seem to be the only way to being calm & safety back to something just far too big for little minds to take on. I felt so sad that this had even come about, like he'd lost a bit of his innocence. But I guess it had to happen...

With my kids I have explained to them that when people are very old they are ready to die. They have seen the scene in Return of the Jedi when Yoda dies (well, he was 900) and they understand that he was very old and tired and ready to die.

I don't want my kids to see death as something that is always a terrible tragedy. If it's at the right time I see it more as the final stage of life, something inevitable, natural, and not to be feared.