Explaining Death to Children

November 22, 1963- the kind of crisp fall day New England is famous for.  I'd spent the day with my little sister, enjoying her chatter about her upcoming birthday and Thanksgiving just a few days away.  She was outlining her plans for a birthday party when our background music was interrupted. John Kennedy had been shot- and killed.  Stunned by the vulnerability of even so well guarded a man as the president, grieved by his loss, I could hardly speak.  My sister took it all in, wide-eyed, swallowing over and over, gripping her chair.  Finally, her voice no more than a whisper, she asked, "Can I still have a birthday party?"  "How can you think about that now?" I chided.  Today, I'd know better.  Children can't take large doses of grief.  They need familiar people and events to stay balanced.

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated five years later, Mister Rogers was there to help.  The day after the shooting, on a special programme for children and their parents, he talked about how scary it is for someone's daddy to be shot, to die, and to leave behind children who love him.  He helped his viewers confront their own vulnerability but reassured them that it is very unusual to have a shooting in the family.  Most children can feel secure that their daddies will be alive until they grow up.  Parents were reassured that a wide range of behaviour is normal while children were grieving and were encouraged to talk to their children about it.  "Any human thing is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable..."

Knowing what to say to our children is easier if we understand their concept of death.  Most young children don't understand its permanence.  In the magic world they inhabit, wishing does make it so.  They can create or transform or destroy their interior world and the world outside.  The phenomenon of television only reinforces this magic thinking.  Week after week, they see people killed on one programme, only to return alive on another- or even the same programme with another name.  Is it any wonder that when someone they know dies, they believe it is only temporary, that person will return?

Magic thinking in the young child is coupled with egocentricity.  Everything that happens not only has a direct bearing on her, she believes, but is probably caused by her- and she may have the power to undo it all.  Developmentally, this is a normal stage in mastering the world, but when there has been a death, egocentricity can be a fearsome source of presumed power and guilt.  Children often blame themselves for the death of someone else.  Believing that they are at the centre of all activity and trying to make sense of an overpowering and painful event, they make tenous connections and draw their own conclusions.  "If I wouldn't have sneezed in front of him, Grandpa wouldn't have caught pneumonia and died."  "Mom always said we'd be the death of her.  Why didn't we behave?"

Even older children, in the face of grief can be thrown back on thought processes appropriate to much younger children.  I was 11 when my cousin and life-long playmate, Jeffie, was accidentally shot by his best friend.  Like many adolescents of mixed gender, we'd been a little on the outs at the time.  I'd even stuck out my tongue at his picture just the day before he died.  I was well into my teens before I really believed I had no responsibility for his death.  Magic thinking and egocentricity explain, in part, why our children are sometimes puzzled by the way we behave.  How can we be so preoccupied with our grieving that we forget that our children are sad, too (even if a temporary separation is painful), that we don't listen to what they say, that we are not as interested as usual in their projects?

But much of their puzzlement is simply ignorance of the customs surrounding death.  Why do we ‘lay-out' our dead, dress them in their best (or buy a new outfit), put them in a box and bury it in the ground?  Why do we go to church when someone dies, and why do so many people try to keep children away from the proceedings? Why indeed?

When my mother was dying, my 5-year-old wanted to see her.  The nurses in intensive care, already aghast that the doctor had permitted all the children to see her together, tried to dissuade me.  My mother might slip away at any moment.  She didn't know us.  What good would it do her?  My explanation that Eli, who had asked for the visit, was the one who would benefit, fell on deaf ears.  Their hysteria mounted when Eli arrived- just a few minutes after his grandmother died.  "You can't let him in now!" they chorused.  The choice, I told them, would be his.  He chose to go in.  For a few seconds, he stood still, taking it all in. "The line on the monitor is flat" he told me gently.  "That means she is dead,"  He sat down beside her, and for the last time, held her hand.  A minute or two later, he was finished.  Five-year-olds have short attention spans, even for important moments.  As he stood up to go, he asked me, "Why didn't the nurses want me here?  It's not scary.  Oma just looks like she's sleeping."  I had no answer for him.

If children understand death so differently from adults, do they really grieve when someone near to them dies?  They do, and that grief may be all the more intense because they don't understand.  They feel abandoned, afraid, angry, guilty - all the feelings adults go through without the maturity and experience to give them perspective.  Their timetables and psychic needs are quite different from ours.  Sometimes adults chide children for behaving ‘inappropriately' after a death, but what might be inappropriate for an adult is simple emotional survival for a child.  Children need their grieving cut in small portions.  If they aren't to be overwhelmed, they need a chance to play, to be with friends, to pursue normal activities, and they shouldn't be considered callous for doing this.

Children, like adults, do deny the deaths of loved ones, and because their pace is so leisurely, that denial may persist long after adults have passed through other stages of grief.  One of my daughters, dry-eyed at the death of her much-loved grandfather, was beside herself several months later when a boy she knew from camp was killed.  She didn't understand either the emotional numbness or the sudden torrent of grief, but it is not unusual for open grief to be delayed or to be set off by another death that is seemingly less important.

Bargaining is a routine tool children use to try to control a world that is run by other people.  When someone close has died, they may try to drive quite elaborate bargains with God to get the situation reversed.  It never works, and gradually they realize that they can't command the universe, that their powers are very limited and that the person they love is gone forever.

Once children begin to realize that death is permanent and that nothing they do can alter it, they often go into a cycle of anger and depression.  They may be openly angry with the person who died or the person they believe allowed the death.

Even God may be the object of their wrath.  But more often, the anger isn't direct.  The children misbehave, have tantrums, and experiment with all kinds of behaviour that demonstrates the anger they aren't able to put into words.

Depression often follows anger...  Children may feel guilty about their behaviour, or they feel hopeless in the face of a painful loss they are powerless to reverse.  The sadness may be quite pervasive, obvious to anyone who will see.  Or it may be more subtle, and adults, caught up in their own grief, may mistakenly welcome the greater quiet and ‘improved' behaviour.

Children who are depressed or angry need adults who are sensitive to their feelings and their ways of coping.  Angry children need to know it is safe to be angry and will help them put limits on their acting out.  Depressed children need adults who will recognize their depression and don't mistake it for ‘good' behaviour, who know that difference between appropriate sadness and depression that is out of hand, who make themselves available for their children to talk to.

Acceptance comes with time and support.  Children whose grieving is recognized and respected, who have access to a grown-up who is willing to listen, be tolerant of some outbursts and offer comfort, without advice of ‘keep your chin up', almost invariably come to accept the death and move on with their lives.

• Tell the truth in terms the child can understand. Many adults try to spare their children by fabricating a tale about the person who has died, "Daddy has gone on a long trip, far away" or be delaying the truth. "We'll wait until things settle down", or even withholding it, "She's too young to understand anyway." Children are rarely fooled by these ploys, and are often anxious because of them. They are better off being told immediately by someone close in terms they understand.
• Children need to be included. It used to be common practice to send children away during a time of grief. That only heightened their anxiety, added to their feelings of abandonment and deprived them of support just when tensions were highest. Funerals and other grieving rituals are helpful to children, too, and, wherever feasible, they should be allowed to take part.]
• Grieving children need loving support. At a time when their world has been turned upside-down, they need to be held and hugged, rocked and listened to, kissed and tucked in. All the significant adults- teachers, coaches, scout leaders, should know about the situation so they can help too. It's easy to overlook a grieving child, especially if he/she is being ‘good' (i.e. not bothering the grown-ups), but the too quiet grieving child is a child at risk. Better to seek him out and draw him out than later deal with the effects of unresolved grief.
• Expect some delays and regressions. A child may take longer than a year to grieve for someone close, but be alert for grief that is too prolonged or grief that never surfaces, especially if the child seems depressed or is acting out. Professional help makes sense, even if it is ordinary grief that is causing the problems.

As parents, we would like to spare our children unnecessary grief, but we cannot shield them from every loss- nor should we.  As we help our children express their feelings, say ‘good-bye' and continue with their lives, we are helping them develop a more realistic view of the world and a resilience to cope with it.

WHAT TO SAY TO CHILDREN WHEN SOMEONE HAS DIED

Explain to children that dead means the body stopped working.  When the person or animals is alive, the body is doing its work.  The body makes the person or animal breathe, move, eat, see, hear, touch, smell, talk,, play, think, feel.  Dead means the body stopped working.  They heart stops beating, and breathing stops.  The person or animal can not see, feel, touch, taste, talk, play, think or eat anymore.  It looks like the person or animal is asleep, but isn't sleeping and the person or animal cannot wake up.

The person or animal who died does not need their body anymore.  That special part of what we loved so much about the person or animal is call the soul.  It is where all the specialness is and when a body stops working, the soul goes to live with the angels (or whatever your belief is).

Children have the right to go to a funeral or memorial service.  The child can choose.  Prepare the child carefully and tell factually what the process is like and what is going to happen.

Explain that because the body isn't working anymore and the soul is now with the angels (or whatever you believe) two things can happen to the body.  The body is put into a wooden box called a coffin.  After the service the coffin can either be put deep into a deep hole in a graveyard.  The hole gets covered by ground and loved ones can go  back to the grave and put flowers on afterwards.  Something else that can happen to the body which is not working and which is in the coffin, is that it gets burned or cremated.  Afterwards the ashes are given to the loved ones and the ashes can be kept in a beautiful container or spread somewhere special.

It is good for adults and children to say good bye and several things can be done:

• Write a letter to the dead person/ animal
• Draw a picture for the dead person/ animal
• Make a card for the dead person/ animal
• Plant a tree, put a wind chime, bird-bath, etc in the garden in memory of the person/ animal.

Children have the right to say good bye to their loved ones and with preparation can see the body.  Children are very in-tuned and resilient and the more we honestly include them on the workings of life, the more we learn from them.

CHILDREN'S CONCEPT OF DEATH

Preschoolers:

Death is merely a deep sleep.  Children worry about the comfort of the dead person and are concerned that the dead person may be hungry, cold, or lonely.  Death is temporary, reversible, and caused magically.  Children at this age tend to respond in varied, often contradictory, and unpredictable ways.  They may be angry with the dead person for abandoning them or anxious that others may also leave them.  A preschooler may be convinced that some thought or action of his or her own caused the death.  Adults must be sensitive to changes in behaviour caused by the guilt feelings.

Ages six to eight years:

Death is conceived as a person.  If the child's magic is strong enough, death can be fought and mastered.  Death does not take young and healthy people.  Only the old and sick are too weak to hold death off.  The dead can still hear, eat, see and breathe.  This causes many fears about the fate of the corpse.  Children at this age may worry bout being trapped in coffins.  They are fascinated about what happens to corpses after death and may be preoccupied with decomposition and decay.

Ages nine to twelve years:

Children now know that what lives also dies.  They have let go of magical thinking and replace it with a higher order of logic.  Death is understood as normal and irreversible.  Dead people cannot be brought back to life.  They are concrete and objective in their reasoning.  They still may think that death will not happen to them until they are very old.  In fact, with luck, it is possible to escape death altogether.

Children at this developmental stage understand internal illness as a cause of death, as well as physical violence and accidents.  Their anxieties are more likely to be related to the physical consequences of death than to separation.  Physical causality is understood, so their fears may focus on bodily mutilation, being buried alive, and the physical process of death.  Because they understand the irreversibility of death, they may receive a comfort in the belief of life after death but still have difficulty visualizing a decaying body in a coffin and in heaven at the same time.  The concept of a soul is usually too abstract for an 11-year-old to understand.

Adolescence:

Death is final and irreversible.  It happens to everyone, including themselves.  Adolescents are as capable of abstract reasoning as adults.  They are concerned with the theological beliefs or explanations of life after death.  Death is remote and spiritual rather than concrete and physical. It is inevitable, but will not happen immediately.  Adolescents live for the moment and deny the possibility that death could interrupt any of their current or life plans.  Adolescents may take unwarranted risks when seeking thrills or impressing friends because they do not accept the reality of personal danger.  They may focus on the glory of death and may idolize a peer who has died.

STAGES OF GRIEF

The course of normal grief has both similarities to and differences from grief caused by crisis. People grieve in their own way.  Those in mourning must move through the grief process, regardless of how painful, if loss is to be resolved with time.  Unfortunately, unresolved grief can manifest itself many years later.  Individuals with unresolved grief pay a high price in mental distress and illness.

Stages of Grief for Those Who are Dying:

• Stage 1 - Denial: it is hard to believe or accept the impending death.
• Stage 2 - Anger: Why me? The anger is directed at everybody.
• Stage 3 - Bargaining: Some people may try to bargain to put off death. There are so many unfinished things to do. Promises are made to God or whoever is perceived to have the power to prolong the inevitable.
• Stage 4 - Depression: When the realization sets in that death is inevitable, depression results. The person is mourning for his or her own death and losses. They are also very sad for those left behind. Guilt may accompany depression.
• Stage 5 - Reflection: The dying person accepts what is happening and may withdraw from loved ones, review the past life with satisfaction, and become ready for death, with quiet resolution.

Stages of Grief for Loved Ones:

There are ten stages of grief that people usually go through after a loss before they find their way back to the "mainstream life".  These grief expressions are normal, but not everyone experiences them in the same order or necessarily goes through all the stages.

• Stage 1 - Shock
• Stage 2 - Expression of emotion
• Stage 3 - Depression and loneliness
• Stage 4 - Physical symptoms of distress
• Stage 5 - Panic
• Stage 6 - Guilt
• Stage 7 - Anger and resentment
• Stage 8 - Resistance
• Stage 9 - Hope
• Stage 10 - Affirmation of reality

Grief "Work"

Grief has often been described as grief "work".  It is not a passive process that will simply happen without effort of pain.  To progress through the stages, a grieving person has to actively work through tasks.

• Accept the reality of loss. The shock of loss is very great. There is a tendency to deny that the death occurred or deny the significance of the loss.
• Experience the pain of grief. The pain is both physical and emotional. Avoidance and suppression of the pain simply prolongs the mourning process.
• Adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing. Changes in the daily living routine happen after a loss. Excessive dependency on others will foster helplessness.
• Withdraw emotional energy and reinvest in another relationship. Past attachment with the deceased is lessened without betraying the memory and new relationships are formed. The gap may be filled but it nevertheless remains something else. Life changes.

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