It’s natural to want to avoid talking about death with your child. But if you skirt the issue or speak in hushed tones when someone passes away, your child may become even more curious. Most kids this age have trouble grasping the permanence of death because their sense of time isn’t developed. They don’t understand the concept of forever. When they play dead, for example, they can get up and run around a few minutes later. Kid’s understanding of death occurs gradually, and they use plat to make sense of what it means.
Your child may ask lots of questions; try to answer the, patiently and honestly, but keep your explanations simple. Tell him, for example, that when a person is dead, his body doesn’t work anymore and he can’t become alive again. You can say that it’s usually something that happens to older people when their bodies get very tired and can’t be fixed.
It’ll still take a while for the concept to sink in. even if a close family member has died and your child has attended the funeral, he might ask “Is grandma coming to my birthday party?”. It is very confusing to our little ones to understand death because they’re taking it literally. If you say that your guinea pig has “gone to sleep”, there’s a good chance that your child will develop a fear of going to bed. So try to be honest as possible and always use the right words that won’t traumatized your child.
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Tags: acceptance, death, family, permanence of death, separation
