I was asked to put together some of my thoughts on the question of raising a grieving child for a popular magazine. I tried to be precise, but I began to see there were some pre-conditions that needed to be met first. The key issue I keep coming back to is this: how comfortable is not only the parent, but also each person around the parent who wants to help, about the place of death in their lives? Do they mumble and stumble and turn away from this issue? In my family, as I grew up, death was not discussed with children. How we cope depends, in part at least, on what we learn as a child. I had a lot to learn when I began my work with the bereaved. Now I no longer close my eyes when I go by a cemetery. In your pain, can you remember your own experience as a child? Did any part of it serve you well now as a grown-up with your own loss, as well as that of your child's? What did you want to know that adults wouldn't talk about; what vocabulary did you learn at home? I have said this before: the best way to help children with this fact of life is to be honest and open with them, to answer their questions, to listen, and to try to understand what they are asking. It is alright to say "I don't know" or "I want to think about that," or to ask "can you tell me again what you want to know?" It is also fine to say "right now I am very sad" and "can we just be together without talking, can we just share our sadness?"
You may want to read about what others have said. For example, in our new book published by Oxford University Press, A Parent's Guide to Raising Grieving Children: Rebuilding Your Family After the Death of a Loved One, Madelyn Kelly and I have a chapter titled "What Death Means to Children." In this chapter, you will find some guidelines for talking to children about the death of a parent, a sibling, or a friend. This chapter looks at how a child's age affects their understanding about what has happened in their family and in their lives. Children under the age of five will often ask "so will they be back tomorrow?" They do not fully understand the finality of death. What they have lost is someone who took care of them, who played with them, who made their world feel safe and predictable. They seek the familiar, the activities that make their world stable. When they play, it does not mean that they are not sad or untouched by the death. Rather they are doing something that they know and that has remained unchanged.
As children mature, they understand more. When my son was eight, a young friend died. My son wanted to know what happens to people after they die -- a typical question at this age. I had no religious point of view I wanted him to adopt. I asked him what he thought. This may be a good question regardless of what you believe. I told him there were different points of view: Some people believed there was an afterlife in which the soul of the deceased lived on; others thought there was nothing; and some said the spirit lives on in ways we don't understand. I asked him what he thought and he said he thought that the spirit lives on. I was relieved to finish the conversation and regretted not asking him what he thought this meant. I was also mourning the young friend who died; it was the first time I had to talk to my child about death, and we were not talking about someone who had experienced a full life to old age, we were talking about a young child. I knew I had to be open with him, but I wanted the conversation over as quickly as possible. For all that I had learned from my work, the old discomfort came back.
Many years later, when my son was an adult and I felt more relaxed, I asked him again what he thinks happens when people die, and he chose the same answer. However, he was able to say now that he didn't really know what it meant, but that view is what he feels comfortable with. He also said he was glad we gave him the words to talk about death in people's lives. This was very helpful to him in his own life as a parent. His dog, Sage, died when his daughter was two years old. He took her to where the dog was buried, and she was with us when we cried and said a few memorial prayers. She learned words that gave a name for her sadness and she wasn't afraid. We comforted her and held her, and she knew we were there for her and that in our way we all felt the same things. We were able to patiently explain that Sage would not be back tomorrow, and we were prepared to explain this as often as we needed to. It took her two more years before she really understood, but she knew we could listen and respect what she was trying to understand but that we didn't have any magical words that would make it easy for her. It was alright to talk about Sage and share her sadness with us, and she sensed that we felt the same way. It was clear to her that, just as it is not possible to replace a particular person who has died, it is not possible to replace a dog. In time, a new dog with a different manner might find a place in this home. It would be a new relationship. It is easier to talk about a dog rather than a parent; but it is a place to begin if that is what is happening in a child's life.
