This thread from 2000 touched on the issue, but my question is not so much about explaining a specific death, than explaining the reality of death to a four year old.
My son is a reasonably bright child who is constantly asking questions about the world that surrounds him. He wants to know how things work, what they are made of, and why things happen. The topic of the moment for him is death. I don’t know what started it, but for the last few days he has been asking us some difficult questions.
He wanted to know if it was true that everybody was going to die. “Are you going to die Mummy? Am I?” I said that yes, we would; but not for ages and ages and that he really shouldn’t worry about it. I tried to sway the topic over to all the wonderful things that awaited us during our lives, but he was still visibly upset.
What should you tell a child that age? I don’t want to fob him off with fairy tales, but I fear that burdening a child so young with the absolute finality of death is too much for him to cope with emotionally, if not intellectually. Why is it that I don’t have similar qualms in telling him the tooth fairy will come for his teeth when they fall out, yet I find it impossible to give the traditional stock answers about heaven? I don’t want to put my principles above his emotional well being, but I don’t want to be dishonest or patronising either.
I very vaguely remeber asking something similar at a similar age. The answer certainly satisfied my incipient atheism …basically, I was told something along the lines of “I won’t always be here, one day a long way away you’ll be the oldest person in the family”. The ‘absolute finality’ wasn’t too difficult for me to deal with. (Well, on the other hand, it was far too much for me to deal with when a friend died suddenly a couple of years ago. Being an adult isn’t any insulation from such emotions.)
You’re right to avoid fairy tales. And unless you’re directly involved in the religious upbringing of the kid, don’t mentione God or anything overtly religious, even if that’s a challenge for you personally (the worst thing for a child in that situation would be to get conflicting religious messages from different people).
Thanks, GorillaMan. There is no religious upbringing involved, in that we don’t practice any particular religion. There is a chance however that he will get conflicting messages, should he choose to go around asking people the same questions. Some of the people he comes into contact with are believers or at least the kind who think that the ‘going to heaven’ explanation is the most appropriate for a young child. I did try telling him that no one really knows what happens when you die, and that different people believe different things, and gave examples such as heaven, reincarnation and simply going to sleep forever. But, I can’t help thinking that this will only confuse him.
All children ask this question at some point, and it’s one of the most difficult things for a parent to answer. Some of it depends on the child’s age: when my daughter first brought the subject up, she was small enough that she really only wanted to be reassured that I was not going to die any time soon. It subsequently became harder to explain, as her questions became more complex, until she was old enough to understand it by herself.
A few years back my aunt died. Some close friends apparently decided this would be an opportunity to explain the concept of death to their young daughter (not someone she had ever met but close enough to be in her “real world”.) I was not actually present when the conversation occurred, but I think I got a complete recap the next time I saw her.
“I heard you aunt died.”
“Yes she did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“She was sick.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Really sick.”
“Yes…”
“Really really really sick…”
My son asked the question of me when he was five years old and I’ve never felt more inadequate. I told him that death was the final part of life and that usually people died when they were very old and didn’t really want to live anymore. It turned out that he had been brooding quite a while over the death of a fellow pre-schooler who had been struck by a car when he darted into the street. All I could do was to tell him that he had to be careful in life. I will never forget the anguish he showed when he began crying about how much he had liked the kid who was killed and how much he missed him. I could only tell him that sometimes things happened that weren’t fair and that sometimes bad things happened to good people. I know he wasn’t satisfied with my answers and I know he wasn’t comforted----I still wish I had been better prepared for the question.
The mother of one of my friends had a very good answer to this question: “You’ll die some day a long time from now, and they’ll put you in the ground, and you’ll turn to earth, and out of that earth, a flower will grow”. No fairy-tales and yet some hope.
I didn’t find that thread when I searched, so thank you. It contains a lot of useful advice and was generally a riveting read. I also found it reassuring that all the answers I came up with were what others had said when they were in the same situation.
…basically, I was told something along the lines of “I won’t always be here, one day a long way away you’ll be the oldest person in the family”. The ‘absolute finality’ wasn’t too difficult for me to deal with. (Well, on the other hand, it was far too much for me to deal with when a friend died suddenly a couple of years ago. Being an adult isn’t any insulation from such emotions.)