Talking with Children About Death
“Joey, there’s something we need to tell you.”
It was a perfect spring day in Holland, Michigan, sun shining, tulips blooming on 16th Street, when his father and I told our older son, Joseph, that his younger brother, Isaiah, was going to die. We called Joey to the back porch together, explained that the doctors had done everything they could to help Isaiah’s body work, but there was nothing else they could do, and Isaiah’s body was going to stop working - he was going to die. Joey was very solemn for about one minute, and then he ran down the steps and into the backyard, resuming the battle he’d been engaged in, slaying zombies like the 6-year-old he was.
When adults imagine telling children about someone they love dying, we often carry all of our adult fears and grief with us, and place them like an overlay on top of our children - chastising them when they laugh, thinking something is wrong with them when they play chase at the funeral, fearing that they are too young to understand death.
As a child life specialist and social worker who specializes in child and adolescent therapy, I am grateful to see children play in the midst of death. I know that play is the language of children: it is how they communicate, how they process, and how they regulate their nervous systems. As a bereaved parent, I know how terrifying conversations about death can be with our children. Below are a few tips meant to support you as you navigate conversations about death with the children in your life.
Introduce death from an early age
Death is all around us. Tree leaves wither and fall each autumn. Baby birds fall from nests. Pets die of old age. There are many beautiful children’s books that introduce death using the natural world, and can open up gentle discussions with children, such as Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children or The Memory Tree.
Be honest and keep it simple
When we try to keep information about death from children to protect them, they often make up their own answers to their questions, and their answers are often scarier or more confusing than the truth. “Grandma’s body has a sickness that the doctors can’t heal, so her body is going to die. When someone dies, their body stops working, so they don’t breathe, or move, or eat, or talk. And they don’t feel pain anymore.” It’s important to use concrete words like ‘dying’ and ‘death’ because ‘passing away’ or ‘going to sleep’ can create confusion and fear for children. Children may need to move back into play, or silence, to process, or they may ask follow up questions. The Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families offers many resources, and you can learn more about developmental responses to death here.
Offer space, express your emotions, and validate their emotions
Offer space for children to ask questions. Help them identify safe people they can talk with, whether that’s Poppa, Titi, their counselor, or you. It’s okay to let them see you cry, and it’s okay to acknowledge your feelings; doing this lets them know it’s okay to express their feelings, and they feel less alone. Validate the emotions they do feel - anger, sadness, relief, fear, confusion, joy… a whole range of emotions can be present around death - and that can be confusing for children. Reassure them that it’s normal to feel many different emotions.
Reassure and support
Reassurance comes in many forms for children. For some families, talking about your ideas or faith beliefs about what happens after death may be important. Maintaining routines, and knowing what comes next provides a sense of safety for children. It’s also important for children, especially younger children, to know that the illness or death is not because of something they did or said. Providing opportunities for your child to make memories with or say goodbye to a loved one in a way that feels good to them can be comforting… perhaps it’s making a card, or looking at pictures, or making Grandma’s cookies together. There are many ways to offer support for children before and after a death. If you are seeking further resources in the community, finding a therapist who works with grief is one avenue; Ele’s Place and Gilda’s Club are also wonderful local resources to support families coping with grief.
It has been seventeen years since Isaiah’s death, and Joey has grown into Joseph, a young adult with a gift for empathy. I’ve continued to have conversations about life and death with him, each developmental stage offering up new questions and new understanding, and I’m always grateful to grow with him in joy and in grief.
