Advice needed.... Explaining death to a 3 and 5 year old

alleycat--

Welcome to A2K.

Please accept my sympathy for your loss. Your surviving children must be a comfort for you, even when they ask for unknowable information.

Since you are a believer, I would tell your children that no living human being can understand all of God's reasons for acting the way God does.

The family next door doesn't hurt now--but there will be a time in the future when God will ask that family to do something very hard without understanding why it must be done.

You and your thoughtful son will be in my thoughts.

alleycat1, so sorry for your loss. It's gut-wrenching.

I've known two adult men who both lost siblings in their infant / toddler years.

It affected them all their lives.

Seems like the tragedy just continued over the years and the whole family suffered fall-out from it.

Hope someone here can help with advice.

As the years go by--and this is just from what I've seen these two men suffer--try not to idealize the deceased. Your son can never compete with that, he is here, he is living and growing, and living and growing is awkward enough for any of us without being compared to someone who didn't have to go through it with all their failings and warts adding up as the years go by, too.

Try not to blame anyone. And, if for some reason your spouse must blame you, then, well, I would let them. They do it because they can't live with maybe it was their fault, and the guilt is so soul-deep that if they can't find someone else to take the blame, then they can't move on to function, and then the whole family suffers. So, if you can, just move that burden to yourself, and move on. Even and especially if you are not to blame. I know it doesn't make sense, and it might not even be right. But I'm just speaking from one family's experience and the mother who couldn't shake it so much she could never recover.

God, I'm so sorry.

See that is exactly what I am trying to avoid. And as the years go by I plan to continue to talk to them about it. We don't know why she passed away and we are having another baby in November and it is a girl too. You see she was not sick. She had never eally been sick. She was just like my two first children. Calm and quiet until they learned to talk and wrestle and play... and she was just getting to that stage of it all. and then she left us all in shock and in pain and I just wanted to give a general idea of our discussions.. they have been more detailed and ongoing than it may appear.. its just hard to know what to tell them when I don't know what to tell myself. And I think that we all have to move on, but that does not mean forget, and remember does not mean "idolize". I spent her whole life comparing her to them because they are older. I can't see myself ever doing the reverse of that because it would make no sense. Like you said.. she didn't get to go through anything that they will get to experience and that is just another "WHY" question I am dreading. I just am searching for someone who can understand and possibly help me with these answers. ok? Thanks guys.

First of all, I am truly sorry this has happened . A loss of a child is devistating.
May you heal quickly and as completely as possible.



My suggestion for what you can say to your kids may sound rough , but please bear with me
and understand I mean no harm. Death is not an easy subject . Espically when
you are having to teach kids about it .



If I were in your shoes, I would re-word my answers to their questions.
And heres why.
Your children are asking ' why did god take our sister?"

God did not TAKE their sister.
Remember, in thier minds they are using the word TAKE literally..

He WELCOMED her soul / spirit.. her energy, to be WITH him.
And I think it is important to distinguish between the two.
In a 5 year olds mind, when you say " Good took your sister to be with him"
They take that quite literally. They begin to form the idea that 'GOD' picked up
and sort of STOLE thier sister from them.
And that isnt the case.

Children have a hard time understanding that one word can mean many things. Using the word ' take' with a child ,means to them to' pick up and remove something'.

I point this out because you will also be teaching them , in this time of thier lives,
to find comfort, answers and peace in church and with God. These two ideas,
1) that god TAKES
2) that GOD loves
are - conflicting- and difficult for a young child to distinguish.
Adults candistinguish these two and do. . But children can not.
For a 5 year old,
thinking that 'god' has TAKEN something FROM them means GOD is a bad person, a thief if you will.. and that isnt what you want your children to think.
Reason is , after a while they would have associated unfairness, distrust, anger and fear with God.
When you try to teach them to find comfort, peace and happiness with God, they wont be
able to because in their minds.. he is a theif.
. They know God takes people away when ever he wants to. Again.. that isnt the case.

I hope what I have said has helped and wasnt offencive.
I truly dont mean to be. I just wanted to offer a diffrent point of view and some diffrent words to help you in this situation.

Please accept my condolences as well. Nothing can be harder than having a child die.

My thinking in explaining is similar to shewolf's. I think there is danger in the gone to be with angles explaination.

I work with a group that is involved with terminally ill children. They always advise the truth:

"Baby became very ill (or injured or nobody knows) and it was impossible for them to stay alive. It doesn't happen often. Most kids get to grow up and have great lives."

Then add the religious element:

"Baby is in Heaven now with God and Jesus and all of the angles and s/he isn't hurting and some day, a long time from now, we will get to see her/him again when we go to Heaven."

I too believe that "God wanted her" or "God took her" sets up an enviornment for a child to think God is selfish and mean.

Again, I am so sorry for your loss. Hearing stories like this puts my life into perspective. I'm going to count my happinessess tonight.

I am so sorry for your loss. I agree with shewolf and boomerang. Children have a hard time accepting that somebody they love has gone. Especially a younger sibling. It is important that they do not associate this loss with blame. Blame regarding God or any living person.

Since they will soon have another little sister, it is also important that they do not think that the loss was somehow to make room for the new addition. Children think differently than we do.

The questions that your young one asked are very real to them and they want answers to something that they cannot accept or explain. If it also important for them not to think that they could easily have something happen to them. Again, boomerang's advice is good in this regard.

I, of course, do not know your religious believes but I think it is important that they know that God will take care of their little sister. If you are a praying family, you can include this in your prayers.

I hope that you can find comfort in prayer and the knowledge that you can still cherish the memory of those short months with your precious little girl. I doubt that the pain will ever go away, but perhaps it can be tempered as see your other children grow and develop.

My prayers are with you and your family.

I'm really sorry for your loss. Death is painful for anyone and I can only imagine how much worse it is when it's your own child. Well done for keeping it together

I don't really know how to phrase this and I certainly don't know how to explain this to kids: anything you can't say in mekaton and pecs I can't say

Basically I know this is the last thing on your mind right now, but that's why i'm saying it. Make sure that when the new baby comes your kids don't have a chance to do any kind of... i dunno comparison. One of the biggest arguments my sister and I ever had was one where I told her I'd rather of had Benji than her, and she told me the same right back. At some point it's likely to rear it's ugly head - either one of your two still-living children may say something about wishing the other had been taken or that may just be reserved for the baby. It's a horrible thing to contemplate and unfortunately one that needs thinking about

I just felt a warning was necessary.

another good simple way to explain death to a child is to keep it true as Boom said..
When a child asks why or how someone died, just be simple and to the point.
" We have a heart and 2 lungs that have to work for us to be alive. To play, to eat. to laugh..etc. When one of those stops our bodies dont work anymore and we die."
And then, when the 'why' questions pop up it is easier to explain. Why do we need a heart? - To pump blood to our organs.
Why do we need lungs? To put oxygen in our blood.. etc.


I hope things are going as well as they can for you and your family now.

Alley,
My condolences on your loss and congartulations on your soon to be new arrival.
I have perhaps, I different view of matters. My focus, from the outside, has always been a rational type approach. I try to retionalize as much as I can. I know it doesn't make things easier. Get your children to express as much as they can. The hardest part for you will be to facilitate their feelings. The pain will never go away. But, it cannot consume your or their lives. Celebrate her birthday each year and slowly diminish it. your children will recover, but you cannot force their recovery, make them forget or make them hold her in super high praise. Just let them ask their questions and give the solace when they need it.

This is a terrible thing to go through, and I am so sorry for you and your family, alleycat.
I think it may actually be OK to say 'I don't know' in answer to some of the children's questions. You could get bogged down in the endless progressions of whys otherwise. And also, although I'm sure it's right that they must express what they want, it's also all right if they want to keep silent, or seem to forget it. The counsellors who have worked with children who've been through traumas here in England have discovered that too much talking about something traumatic can be worse than silence. We all have different ways to cope with death and loss. But you know your own children, who am I to advise? I'm sure you can handle it well if you stick to your instinct.
But I am full of admiration for your handling of your own grief, which you are obviously doing as well as anyone could.

You have all been so helpful. Thank you.

Geez. I'm really sorry that you had to experience losing your baby. It's something that makes me want to cry just thinking about.

I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said, but am curious about the answers provided and about what you ended up telling your son. I have two that same age and they ask me all the time about life, death, and what is God. I have a very hard time with these. I imagine that is exponentially harder when there is a death so close.