It’s a very interesting question, but isn’t it sort of moot in the context of the OP?
Say child thinks if they hang themselves the next thing they’ll see is a magical world where they’ll meet grandma.
Unless someone was egging them on to do it, there’s unlikely to be a specific adult who is culpable. I think you may as well call it suicide as it’s the closest fit; it most quickly gives people an idea of what happened.
If you call it, say, “death by misadventure”, then on hearing the details many people would still say “Oh…so it was suicide?”.
Descartes had confirmable sensory inputs from the outside world and acted on the world through neural fibers running from brain to muscles, yet he is the very image of solipsism.
One of the mental steps that little children go through is the moment when they realize that the world goes on without them. In fact, it even existed before them. Their parents had lives before them; Grandma hasn’t always been ancient; an item you left on the table moves to another spot while you’re asleep. They often react by having one of the biggest meltdowns of their life and/or by not wanting to sleep because “I want to know what’s going on!” (paraphrased from one of my brothers).
I think this is the core of the question – what is suicide? Or even, “What is life?” I’m an atheist who believes that when our bodies are dead on Earth, there ain’t no more.
But IMHO, someone who believes that they will more or less go to sleep on Earth and wake up somewhere else is operating on a different wavelength. Even if they end their Earth life deliberately, they don’t think they are ending their whole life.
I think this is a question that can only be settled by what amounts to legal definition of “suicide”. My experience is limited, but I’ve never heard of laws regarding suicide written in a way to exclude those who believe they will experience an afterlife.
Interesting! I recall my nephew, as a little kid, having a howling meltdown once. He was looking at a picture of himself as a baby and lost it because the carpet was different. He wanted it changed back. I always thought that crying jag was because he needed a nap, but maybe not.
[QUOTE=** Boyo Jim**But IMHO, someone who believes that they will more or less go to sleep on Earth and wake up somewhere else is operating on a different wavelength. Even if they end their Earth life deliberately, they don’t think they are ending their whole life.
I think this is a question that can only be settled by what amounts to legal definition of “suicide”. My experience is limited, but I’ve never heard of laws regarding suicide written in a way to exclude those who believe they will experience an afterlife.[/QUOTE]
Religious adults who commit suicide and expect an afterlife are still fully aware that they are leaving a physical life, and living family, behind. Just because they believe that they are probably going elsewhere (and I think for a vast majority, it’s a ‘probably’ belief) doesn’t mean that they think their suicide is without impact. Even discounting the grieving family, ending your time living on a particular spiritual plain, the only one you’ve ever known, is hardly a trivial act. On an emotional, traumatic level, I don’t see much difference between the believer’s and the non believer’s suicide.
For children…I’m a lot less sure. I suppose, once again, it depends upon age and developmental level. Before seven or so, kids are still fairly shaky on cause and effect. I’m sure that by six, I knew that death took you away from your parents. I’m not sure I knew it was forever. I sort of recall having dreams and ideas about traveling back and forth between heaven and hell and earth. If a child can’t understand the permanence of the situation, how can it be a suicide?
Really? I do. I see death as utter finality, after which there will be no future, no punishment, no salvation, just … nothing. I imagine that’s enormously different than what someone who believes in eternal salvation, or eternal punishment for that matter, would think about it.
Of course, even among people who profess themselves as complete believers with total faith, how many of them really believe that stuff, deep down? I don’t know, but I guess a lot fewer of them that would admit to it.
Who says a child has to have full realization of the consequences of their actions in order to perform those actions?
I could see 5 or 6 being old enough to cause one’s own death, at least as far as being physically capable of performing actions required to do that. Children at that age don’t understand death the way adults do but most of them have some awareness of it.
Perhaps the eternal salvation vs. eternal punishment aspects balance it out? Either way, my point was that suicide is an extreme act whether one believed in an afterlife or not, extreme enough that the belief is neglegable. One commits suicide to end hopeless pain. By the time the person is at that point, eternal rest vs. possible salvation is probably not going to sway a person much.
Fear of Hell, though, might. I can see a person deciding to hold off if they believe that a suicide might be a ticket straight to hell. But not all faiths teach that.
Children don’t think on that same level, though. I can see a child dying in an attempt to, say, reunite with a dead parent, but I’m still not sure that it can be called suicide. I’d have to be convinced that they understood the permanence of the situation, and, as I said, I don’t believe most six year olds have mastered that level.
I’m not convinced all adolescents really understand the permanency of killing themselves, but when a 15 year old hangs himself we still call it suicide without a lot of hand wringing over whether or not the person “understood” what he was doing.
You don’t think a fifteen year old understands the permanency of death? I disagree. Perhaps they won’t grasp certain philosophical concepts revolving around death, but I feel confident that a good majority of fifteen year olds understand that a) when you die, you’re dead forever, b) people will be left behind and the world will continue without them c) the technical rules about such things in regards to their faith, if they have one.
A six year old is still in the stage of true magical thinking - Santa visits everyone’s house on Christmas Eve, blowing out all the candles on my cake makes birthday wishes come true, Dad left home because he was angry with me, or even, if I do this thing that makes me die, I can go see Mommy in heaven and then Jesus can let me come home when I miss my Daddy. I’m not saying all six year olds think this way, but I’d bet a decent majority do.
Piaget says that concrete, non-egocentric thinking starts at about eight. I don’t think it can be called suicide before that.
I was certainly no more than six when I began suffering from depression and wishing I hadn’t been born. I remember running into “traffic” (actually the parking lot of a restaurant) with the intention of being hit by a car and killed. I had an outwardly idyllic childhood, and no particular belief in the afterlife.
Incidentally, I described my depression as boredom for most of my childhood. I had been taught that when you couldn’t think of anything you wanted to do you were bored. I didn’t realize that this was distinct from there being literally nothing that I wanted to do.
We could just go case-by-case and say <name> died by <method of death>. But we may want to know how often this kind of “pseudo-suicide” in general happens.
I guess we could coin a new term (e.g. pseudo-suicide) but it’s somewhat redundant because already you can see the categorization of “suicide” and the age of the victim and draw your own line wherever you want.
If the child in question is depressed, convinced that there is nothing good about him, that he can never do anything right, that his mother hates him (this bit was true) and she’s right in hating him because he is wrong/broken at the most fundamental levels (not true), do you also call that “magical thinking”? That’s not someone who wants to see the fairies in the sky, that’s someone in a state of profound despair.
And careful with taking those “abouts” too literally, too strictly. “About eight” does not equal “on the day they turn eight”: there are people for whom it happens later, there are some for whom it happens earlier. There are some for whom it never really gels, even.
Taking a very spiritual view of this some what may be called, ‘advanced souls’ or even angels who take on human form for a time could do this at a very young age, usually for a greater purpose. Even such things failure to thrive (infancy) and even stillborn/miscarriage. They have a deeper knowing of their purpose in this world, and know it is very time limited. But it is not unto death they pass but really the opposite, their mission is done and they return to a eternal life stage from death (their human form).
I can’t say it with certainty, but I’m pretty sure I realized the permanence of death at. I was 5 for the first burial I remember attending, and I knew I would never see again my great-uncle. I can tell with certainty that at 8, it was perfectly clear for me because I remember explaining it to a much younger kid.
That said, it was another era, and like a previous poster, I was brought up in a very rural area, mostly populated by elderly people (including a large number of relatives), where death was quite frequent and wasn’t hidden, so I’m not sure this is representative of nowadays children, since in our current society, people tend to shield themselves from death, and even moreso shield children from it.
Nevertheless, I do believe that young children have the cognitive ability required to understand death as definitive, even if they might in fact not because they generally don’t have to face it and their parents are reluctant to discuss it bluntly with them.
My daughter was six when she told her therapist she wished she could die a few months after she was raped. She told her she thought about climbing a tree and jumping. She told her she thought about taking pills to sleep forever or holding her breath under water til she drowned. She was fantasizing about it all the time and I had no idea. I didn’t even know she was capable of such thoughts. I never let her watch adult-themed TV and we didn’t know anyone who talked about such things.
She’s 11 now and while she’s a very quiet and shy child she is a lot more positive and talks about the future and what she wants to be when she grows up. She has a therapist but it’s mostly just to give her a safe place to talk about the anxieties still deals with. Play therapy helped her immensely.
I’m sorry I’m not going to read the thread because it’s just too emotionally draining for me, honestly. I just wanted to reply to the OP.
Yep. I work with an expert in intellectual disability, and one of the articles she’s currently working on involves suicide in people with mild and even moderate ID. There’s a fair amount of literature on the topic - trust me, I was tasked with finding journal articles for this project, and they’re out there.
Good point. Here in China, in rural areas, it’s not uncommon to see very young children assisting with, say, butchering of farm animals. That’s going to definitely help with appreciating the permanence of death!
And I think the degree in which we shield children from death has increased over time. In my childhood, there were still many books, movies and TV shows aimed at kids that were actually pretty dark, and featured (good) characters dying.
Whether this is a good thing or not is a discussion for another thread.
Magical thinking doesn’t just encapsulate the happy stuff. “Mommy died because I’m bad,” or “Daddy’s angry and drunk because I didn’t win my baseball game,” is magical thinking too.
True, but abouts are very helpful when talking about a general population. ‘About eight’ gives us a pretty good idea that most six year olds haven’t reached logical thought processes yet. It would be difficult to determine on a case by case basis if a child had reached the age of logical thought after they’re dead, so a generalization seems, well, logical.
Anything before that, I’d probably call ‘accidental death.’