I have a niece I will call “Mary”. One month after Mary’s birth, her mother comitted suicide. Post-partum depression was probably a factor, but the mother was also having a lot of personal/financial problems. She had just gone through a very nasty divorce and her business was bankrupt.
Mary is being raised by her grandmother. She has a very secure, loving environment and is thriving. She just turned three years old. Her father visits, but he isn’t stable financially/emotionally (and probably mentally.)
The child is shown pictures of her real mother and identifies them as “mommy.” She has also visited her mother’s grave, but it’s unlikely she understands the significance of that headstone yet.
Sooner or later Mary is going to want to know what happened to her mother. As a small child, the explanation that mommy died will probably be enough, but as she gets older, she’s going to want to know why. We don’t want to tell her before we have to, but we don’t want to ever have her feel we lied to her.
It’s a dangerous subject. How do you explain suicide to a child? If she’s told about the post-partum aspect, she may internalize it and blame herself for making mommy so sick and sad she wanted to die. Her father very vocally blames members of the community who didn’t pay their bills/stole from the business and caused it to fail. Likely, if she ever asked him, she’d hear him say they drove her mother to kill herself. The gossip mill has invented all sorts of wacky conspiracies. She’s going to get a lot of different stories.
We live in rural a area, and Mary’s mother was prominent in the community. Kids can be so cruel-- in a “ha-ha your mother blew her head off” sort of way. She’d have to be prepared before this sort of thing happened.
Jeez…that’s a tough one. I would refrain from mentioning the post-partum depression (or any “reason”) because it’s hard to know exactly what made her decide to end her life. If you can reason with the father, it might be a good idea to include him in a game plan so there aren’t conflicting stories from within the family.
Then I’d head for the book store and see if there’s something out there that addresses the situation. I’ll bet there is. Good luck.
I’ll add that we had three suicides in our neighborhood when I was a kid. Two moms and a dad. It was extremely uncomfortable for us as children. I don’t recall teasing on two of them, but I do recall some mean songs on one…when we were in jr high (where all evil is spawned).
She knows her Mommy is dead, that’s enough for now. I wouldn’t get into anything heavy until she is mature enough to handle it…not before her teens, at least.
Growning up, I was always told “your grandmother got very sick and died.” I remember thinking that it had to be cancer at some fairly young age. Eventually I asked and was told she had killed herself, but I never knew the details until fairly recently (hung herself, I’d always imagined she’d gassed herself in the oven).
I like the “got sick and died” approach - it treats depression as what it is - and illness, and suicide as a result of the illness. At some point - probably around five or six - she is going to be ready to hear what “got sick” means, and then you can talk about depression - talk about it as a chemical imbalance that isn’t easy to fix - not even with a new baby you love very much.
She won’t internalize “killed herself.” Bring it up then, so that she knows - so she doesn’t imagine something different and get told the truth in sixth grade, but I don’t think that it will have a huge impact on her. At that age they are still pretty selfish, and a mom that they never knew (my son is adopted) is pretty abstract.