Crucifixion for 3 year olds!

[IorekByrnison]

dd has just seen this picture on the front of a book and is asking a lot of questions. (The first one, oddly, was "is that Peter Pan or Jesus?".)

I am struggling to find a suitable way of explaining this story to a three year old without scaring the living daylights out of her. Any tips?

Presumably she knows a little bit about Jesus anyway? I think I would say that Jesus was killed for teaching people things that the authorities were not happy about, and that putting people up on a cross was how they executed people back then. No mention of it being very slow and unpleasant of course... You could stress that people don't get executed any more and it was all a long time ago.

Up to you if you want to mention the idea of the Resurrection, or if that would just confuse the whole alive/dead concept too much for a 3 yo

Thanks AMIS. She doesn't know much (hence the Peter Pan confusion).

Unfortunately the painting depicts the nail holes rather graphically and she immediately wanted to know all about them. Anyway, she seems to have forgotten about it now.

These things seem much more real to us of course. I don't like the idea of introducing the concept of execution so young (especially when sadly it does still happen) but she seemed unconcerned - probably all very abstract to her.

I think it's all so far away from anything she'll know about that it doesn't "connect" to any bad feelings at that age. I can't really recall telling DS (he's 15 now, so 3 is a bit of a distant memory) but he was a regular at church from babyhood and I don't think any of it fazed him in the slightest.

Yes - I'm sure that's right. I had it from babyhood as well and it all just seemed strange and beautiful. Nowadays as an adult rather less immersed in the Christian story it's hard to think of the life or death of Christ without thinking of the horrors that are still perpetuated by the various powers operating in that part of the world.

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