Explaining death to children is challenging for many people. Death is one of the areas in life that is inevitable and discussing this topic seems to be taboo in Western culture.
Although coping with the mental effects of the death of a person or a pet is very hard for adults, it is even more difficult for children.
When Should Adults Start Explaining Death to Children?
The time to prepare a child for the trauma of another person’s or even a pet’s death is long before the event occurs. Death is a normal part of a child’s environment.
By the age of three, most children have seen flowers die. They may have also seen a dead bird or animal in the street or yard, or perhaps they have had a pet die. Children in rural areas where adults are farmers or hunters may also witness death more regularly.
However, young children often ask death-related questions due to curiosity, such as:
- “Where did it go?”
- “Who made it?”
- “What about me? Can I die, too?”
The failure of parents to respond to questions about death or a negative response from a parent may cause a child to feel that “nice” boys and girls do not ask about such “bad” topics. When this situation happens, a child’s questions about death remain unasked and unanswered.
But if a parent explains death as a natural part of living and a part of the life cycle, that’s different. Children will begin to develop an intellectual understanding of death along with the feeling that death is normal.
There Are Various Opportunities for Explaining Death to Children
Life will present various opportunities for explaining death to children. Such an opportunity to explain death to a child comes, for instance, when a pet dies. Although it’s possibly time-consuming for the parent, the experience of holding a funeral and burying a dead pet can be very valuable and educational for a child.
For example, children can gain knowledge about what death means, the mechanics for dealing with death (such as a funeral and a burial), as well as an understanding of their parents’ attitude toward death. Since play is one of the principal ways in which children learn, the drama of burying a dead pet naturally produces questions that should be answered directly, honestly, and simply.
Many times, children will dig up a buried pet, either to deny the fact of the pet’s death or to satisfy a curiosity as to what really happened to it. The need to deny is strong because death means separation. It represents a finality that children find difficult to understand, as do many older children and adults.
A child’s attitude toward death can be built gradually through experience with birds, flowers, and family pets and reinforced by good examples on the part of adults. Consequently, children will be better prepared to deal with the death of a loved one when the time comes.
In the Past, Children Were Left Out of Mourning and Funeral Rites
In the past, children in our culture were often regarded as too young to understand death or to experience grief. They were excluded from demonstrations of grief as well as from the funeral. As a result, many children often felt left out and rejected, unable to comprehend their own emotions and physiological reactions to grief.
Although children are now included in the family’s mourning, many people still say that a child is too young to understand death or remember the deceased. But that is not true.
When a loved one has died, children need to participate with the rest of the family in mourning rites at the funeral or at the gravesite. They need to learn that grief is a natural reaction to death.
Adults Often Experience Trouble Helping Their Children with Grief
Adults often have trouble helping children handle their grief because of their own unresolved feelings about death or because they are enmeshed in their own sorrow. Evading the issue with remarks about children being “too young” to understand death may bring a degree of false comfort to adults.
However, refusing to answer a child’s questions about death or failing to deal with a child’s feelings can cause unnecessary pain, if not emotional damage.
Ideally, children must be allowed to talk openly and honestly about their feelings and be permitted to express all of the emotions appropriate to grief. If adults are not able to deal with the child’s questions or emotions, other people such as a funeral director, a child psychologist, or a clergy member have been trained to talk about grief. To help with explaining death to children, they are available to step in to provide support, answer the child’s questions, and confirm their emotions.
How Children React to the 5 Stages of Grief
The mourning that accompanies death focuses on one of the commonest fears of childhood: separation. To children, permanent separation means there will be no one to take care of them or satisfy not only their physical needs but also their emotional needs.
Fear of separation is tied to the fear of being hurt and it becomes part of the complicated reaction to loss that a child experiences. In children, this reaction to loss normally has five stages.
The first stage is denial and isolation. Another aspect of denial is the frequency with which children claim to have seen the dead relative. If they have “seen” the person, there is no need to grieve.
I think that the same phenomenon happens to adults. However, they are unwilling to acknowledge it or talk about it.
The second stage is anger. The child is hurt by the separation and becomes extremely angry. Anger may cover up guilt feelings for something the child said or did that apparently “resulted” in the death of the deceased.
The third stage is bargaining. The child tries to change the painful reality of permanent separation by making promises such as “I will be very, very good.” By making such a promise, the child has the belief that somehow the dead person or pet will be brought back to life.
The fourth stage is depression, which is anger turned back on itself. During this stage, children may experience physical pain in the chest or throughout their entire bodies. A common symptom is throat pain, which can be a defense against talking out their feelings.
The fifth stage is acceptance and resolution, and it can take children considerable time to reach this stage. During this stage, children have grown to accept the loss and to continue on with life. They start to recall pleasant, happy memories of the loved person or pet who has died and talk about them.
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, documented all of these stages in her 1969 book, “On Death and Dying.” But it needs to be noted that the various stages of grief in children do not necessarily occur in a set order, nor do they occur in the same way in every child. But in most instances, children reach the stage where they experience acceptance of the death.
If you are in a situation where you will be explaining death to children – yours or others’ children – I hope this article will help you. Whether you’re dealing with the death of a relative, a friend, or even a pet, your children will appreciate your understanding and discussion of their feelings.
Comments are closed.