I’m an atheist, my wife is a traditional Taiwanese religious but not really denominational type and she got to the kids first. Of course, we had to explain sooner than many because we have pictures of their older brother who died as a baby.
My wife’s explanation was that their older brother is “in the sky” which works fine for our son, five and soon to be six.
Our daughter, seven and soon to be eight, and I have had more serious discussions about it including the differences between what mommy and daddy think. Even so, it is still age appropriate.
There isn’t any cognitive dissonance for her having been told at age five that Ian is in the sky and now that we have his ashes, because of the developmental differences between those ages.
This is important. You don’t want to have your kid - they go through some amazingly stupid developmental stages between now and adulthood (mine just turned seventeen and eighteen) - blurt out to someone in grief talking about a “better place” something wildly insensitive. Don’t raise an asshole.
My son is a “don’t know, don’t care” agnostic. My daughter is a very involved Unitarian atheist - she speaks in church regularly, helps run youth service, teaches religious education - and absolutely believes that the idea of God is nonsense. We let them come to their own conclusions about death, telling them about heaven, and the idea you become one with the universe, and reincarnation, the idea of living on in memories or what you leave behind in terms of contributions to the earth, or this is it and that’s all there is - we did this over time. And we talked about how sometimes its nice to believe - its comfortable, and sometimes that’s what people need. There are worse things to have your kid end up believing than a belief in the afterlife.
That sort of sounds fine of the face of it, but would you also request that someone of a religious background extend the same courtesy?
i.e. it would be insensitive for a religious person to start talking about “a better place” to someone reconciled to a non-supernatural concept of death. Best to just sympathise, to listen, to help out where you can and keep your religious opinion to yourself unless you are sure that it is wanted or needed.
My little ones have been exposed to the death of close relative and we simply explained it in terms of it being like the place you were before you were born. They seemed perfectly happy with that. We talked about how death was natural and normal, but also that it is sad and emotionally painful but that the best reward of all was to live a good life and that the only way to avoid the pain of death is to never have a loved one exist at all, they both agreed that that would be the worst of all options
This has the advantage of not just sounding good, but basically also being the (probably) true answer. Though I suppose you could try going into changing environments and evolution, but that would probably go over your average 5-year old’s head.
You can teach this using Santa, which is less charged. A kid who figures out that Santa isn’t real can be told to not blurt it out to others to ruin their enchantment.
This was one of the first things I told her – that I think being dead is just like it was before you were born – but it didn’t really seem to stick. Then again, she was pretty distraught at the time, so I may try it again when she’s calmer.
Thanks very much for the responses, everyone. Lots of good advice here, and it’s much appreciated. You’re giving me a lot to think about.
First and foremost, I’ve tried to make it clear to her that this is something that everyone has to come to terms with in their own way, that different people decide to deal with this in different ways, and that it’s something her mom and I are always willing to talk about with her. That much, I think, has gotten through, which makes me optimistic.
I can excuse rudeness sometimes because the person means well and is simply ignorant, but it is nevertheless still rudeness to assume that someone else’s belief system is the same as yours, or somehow should be.
Tangentially, I also believe it is important for children to have some education about the variety of religious belief systems in the world and to present them in a manner less arrogant or condescending than implying that those who believe these things are like little kids still believing in Santa Claus. A reasonably good book for this back when my kids were in the right age group (for this I think Middle School) was “My Friends’ Beliefs”. Yes it is heavily weighted to a variety of Christian denominations but far from exclusively.
I’m an actual Catholic and my kid (also 5) goes to Catholic school, and I think you’re definitely on the right track, and I tell her many of the same things that you’re thinking about. Nobody really knows what happens after death, and different people believe different things. I try to give some examples from world religions in more of a story kind of way, and even though I’m not intentionally trying to distract her, I think she’s interested enough in the wide range of options that the process of mentally comparing and contrasting them cuts the immediate “OMG everyone is going to die!” sadness a little bit.
The thing is that its easy to excuse someone for just “meaning well” when they say that your mother has gone onto a better place - even if you don’t believe it.
Its hard to excuse someone for meaning well when they say “well, I guess that’s it for her then, cause there isn’t an afterlife.”
“I’m sorry for your loss” is the best response, but there isn’t anything intentionally mean about someone saying “better place” - its meant to be comforting.
I would agree that there are better ways to phrase it and to model it than those words. My post however was less in defense of Hampshire’s exact words than in reaction to your thought that a “firmer response would be better”.
IMHO my kids don’t need to be hit over the head with what I think or with me directly instructing them on how to or what to think. To me if anything a less firm response would be better. I am happy to share what I think and why and to listen without judgement to what they think and why. I am happy, when it is age appropriate, to discuss with them the variety of belief systems that different cultural traditions have and to engage in a bit of compare and contrast. Being Jewish I am happy to share what my understanding of death is in the Jewish tradition (and my understanding may be different that the understanding of someone who is Orthodox) as well and what various rituals and traditions accomplish for the living. I am proud they have learned to be interested in and respectful of belief systems that they do not share.
My daughter, at six or seven, was quite impressed with her own intellectual superiority over her peers in many things, but the one that caused the most grief was the “Great Santa Religious War” for which she was the general of the heretics - the battles lasted two years and were apparently fierce.
Also, there is nothing like a four year old ethical vegetarian to make the other parents at day care hate you. (It only lasted about ten days - chicken nuggets did her in - I was betting on bacon).
She has gotten better - although she still fights fiercely for what she knows is right - her focus is more on social justice matters than the existence of Santa or God.
Unfortunately in our house, my older brother and sister (6 and 5) were starting to ask about Jesus versus Santa and my uber conservative parents elected to tell them Santa wasn’t real in order to preserve the belief that Jesus is.
They were instructed not to tell us “younger” kids (sister, 4 and me, 3) but you can’t really expect five- and six-year-olds to not blurt it out. So, I grew up never having believed in Santa.
My friends at school were less convinced and the Great Santa War lasted a couple of years with a smug TB getting to say “Told you” at the end. It took longer to reach such a conclusion about Jesus, but by then I had leaned how to not argue about such things.
We’re coming up on a trip to the States and I’m having to tel Grandma to respect my wishes for what to teach my kids about God.
