Question
How can I talk to children about death and loss?
Answer
Here are some tips so that when you are talking to children about loss or death you use language that's going to help them and not hurt them. You may be working with parents who say, "I don't know how to talk to my child about this. Do you have any ideas, can you help me?" There are a lot of resources out there related to this topic and you can find things online that are very reliable and give you really good information about how to talk to kids about death. This is a big challenge for most parents and for most of us, to talk to kids about these difficult things.
The first tip is to use clear words. Use the words, died and death, if that's what's occurred. Avoid saying things like passed away, lost, or sleeping. As adults we say, "So and so passed away," because it's gentler, it feels better, and we understand that at a different level. We know what that means. Little kids don't always understand that, and they really don't understand when we say grandma's sleeping, or we lost grandma. What they'll say to you is, "Let's go find grandma, then. If she's lost, let's go find her" or, "Let's wake her up" or it could lead to, "I'm afraid to go to sleep because you said grandma's sleeping and grandma can't wake up now." We have to be careful and delineate how we talk about death and dying, specifically with children. Giving clear, age-appropriate information is important.
Expect repeated questions. We know that's what children at this age often do anyway, so they're going to do the same thing about a significant change in their lives. Explain plans for mourning and offer participation for the children. If they want to participate in a funeral or in some kind of separation ritual, that's something that we can plan for them. We know that mourning rituals and participation are extremely important to healing for kids.
Here are a couple of examples of how we can talk to kids or share information with parents so that they feel comfortable talking to their kids about things like divorce or someone who's died. These can be very challenging. It sounds so simple putting it here in words, but it can be very hard for parents or for caregivers to have these types of conversations.
“When a person dies, their body stops working, and they can’t eat or laugh or poop or cry or walk or talk anymore. That means they are dead. When someone is dead, we need to do something with their body, which doesn’t have any feeling in it anymore. Mommy’s body got taken to a place called a funeral home, where they’re taking care of her body for us.”
“Daddy and I are not going to live in the same house anymore. We are getting something called a divorce. We still love you very much and you didn’t do anything to make this happen.”
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Loss and Grief in Early Childhood, presented by Tami Micsky, DSW, MSSA, LSW, CT.
