Talking to your Kids about Death

We have had a sad year in our family saying goodbye to some close family members, both relatives and cherished pets. Death is a hard thing to talk about with small children.  It’s a natural part of life and in our family we felt it was important to allow our kids to take part in all the funeral rituals and customs. 

I lost my  grandmother last winter.  Open caskets were the custom back in her day so it was important the family honour that tradition in her life’s celebration. My husband and I researched and talked about it, and decided to let the kids attend the viewing. They were 3 and a half and everything we read seemed to indicate it wouldn’t scar them for life. We were careful to prepare them and answer questions. We spoke factually but without too much detail.

I think the viewing was actually a really good thing after all. The staff had done an excellent job - my Grandma looked at peace and the experience was not scary. There were a great many questions afterwards about sleeping vs. death. It seemed perhaps a bit easier to understand since the kids had seen things with their own eyes.   

Emma the Cat - furry best friend 

Our cat was almost 19 and we lost her a few months later this spring. While death was not a foreign concept this time, there were still a great many questions. The questions this second time around focused on what happens logistically. ”Where do you go when you die?” This was a struggle to answer and so we settled on “I don’t really know”.  As individuals my husband and I have differing beliefs, so rather than stress one or the other we talked about what we both believe and hope but we stressed that we don’t really know and that's ok. 

Most recently we had to say goodbye to my uncle. There has been a lot of loss in our family in the past 7 months. The questions this time were more practical and detailed... and I ended up having to hush the kids during the proceedings and reassure them we could continue to talk later.  I know that we will have a great many questions come up over the next few weeks as they think things through. 

Have you talked about death with your kids? I found some really great books that helped the discussion in our family. What helped our discussions is keeping it simple, and not going into too many details. My favourite book has been The Tenth Good Thing About Barney.  We checked out a few from our Library and local Chapters. Let me know here on our blog, on our message board or our Facebook Fan Page if you have found anything to help with this discussion in your family.