Not sure how to answer my 9yo

[Angelfire666]

OK so my 9yo has come home from school and asked some questions that stopped me in my tracks the first was... Why am I alive if we're all just going to die anyway?!! And second was..... if father Xmas lives forever then why can't we? I'm really struggling to find a way to answer him that's not going to upset him or spoil that last bit of innocence he's got believing in father Christmas..... Does anyone have any suggestions xx

Father Christmas is easy....magic! As for the other question, ask what he thinks. Children often come up with brilliant theories of their own if you question them a bit.

As a parent you don't know everything and your DS must have realised this by now.

I would probably say, interesting question, why do you all. What do you think?

I usually say similar even if I know the answer. If you always immediately feed all questions, they'll not learn to be enquiring independent thinkers

I would delve a little further if I were you. It could be related to something another child or children have been saying at school. I had an experience with my 6 year old a few months ago. She couldn't sleep, wouldn't settle in her own room and was terrified of being on her own. Turns out another older child on the school bus was telling her stories about evil spirits.

We are here for long enough to make the world a better place to hand over to our children and grandchildren and you’ll do the same the world will get better and better (he is 9 right so lying/stretching the truth is good) in the mean time we have fun, learn new things etc etc Just an idea.

Maybe ask him what he thinks to the first question. Like another poster mentioned, he must know by now that as his parent, you don't know everything. I would tell him that we're alive to be happy and do good things. The second question about Santa, tell him that Santa lives forever because he's magical.

Maybe there's an underlying cause of these questions and you might need to do some delicate digging so DS doesn't realise you are digging. For instance, a child at school may be saying unkind or very explicit things about death.