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her notion of death is heavily influenced by my grandfather dying a few months before she turned three. he was 100, and had struggled to eat enough in the years before he passed that's where the eating comes from. she is also distressed about the idea of being 100. same reason
i'd hoped that doing little things like this would help but i'm not sure it did she actually went to her grandmother's funeral last may, too. and we brought flowers to her great grandparent's grave. last year was rough. https://t.co/xYrRxOI22o
the other night at bedtime she was again upset about dying and I tried explaining souls and the idea of heaven to her, but I think it was too abstract to register. it's very puzzling. and heartbreaking, to hear a four year old plaintively confide that she doesn't want to die.
my own great-grandmother died when I was four, and i went to her funeral. it did stick with me--i remember ruminating on it during nap time at preschool. but i was distressed _for her_ and didn't fixate on my own mortality i think. i guess i might have a bit. 🤔 https://t.co/PFMTsJ2UnJ
My ninth went through the same thing, also at age 4. I have bad news and good news. The bad news: 4 year olds are much smarter and more tenacious than we usually admit to ourselves. This will likely stick around a while. I was going to add, "...especially if you..." and then I remembered my kids so forget it, parents are a rough variable at best. The good news: Kids' brains expand, granted not as much as in the explosion at adolescence, but a good bit. Stick with the basics ("we all do at some point but almost certainly not soon, we go to Heaven and it's joy there but we're supposed to be good and enjoy this world too, grandpa has all he can eat now and is smiling at us," etc.), she'll incorporate it into her world in a remarkably short period of time. (1)(2) (1) It won't feel short to you. That's the other bad news. (2) This really is within the range of normal. I've known I would die some day and even that I was being too rational about it since I was 4 or so; but I lead a reasonably healthy mental and emotional life other than spending too much time on Twitter.
@eigenrobot Kids wreck us, y'know? I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I'm pretty sure I went from getting-carded-in-my-late-30s to no-one-bothers-carding-me-in-my-late-40s-even-when-carding-is-mandatory because of them.
@eigenrobot Everyone deals with death differently I’ll go to my grave convinced that conservatives dealt with the year of Covid better than leftists was most have accepted we are going to die and many of us believe we are going to be with God when we do
@eigenrobot I lost great grandma at 4. My parents helped then by telling me how happy she was to sit and read with me, and that I could remember her and think of her when I was reading in her chair. And that it would happen to everyone eventually, but it was far, far away for them and me.
@eigenrobot How strange to be distressed for those who are by definition beyond any harm or deprivation — the unliving. It is WE who suffer their absence; they suffered, as do we, by LIVING (a.k.a. dying).
I think I figured out that I was going to die at around 3 or 4 I was desperately upset. My parents tried to comfort me, and tell me it would not happen for a long time yet. That didn’t help at all. It was the inevitability that was disturbing me so much. I could see that I was making my parents really unhappy. So I just started to pretend that I was ok, and had gotten over it. For many, many years I just dealt with the terror on and off by myself. Nothing really helped until I saw the movie Troy when I was about 13. Achilles says, “I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything's more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.” I don’t know if that’s a helpful sentiment for a 4 year old, but there is something about this perspective that really helped me. Death is inevitable and tragic, and life is beautiful. One must embrace the enormity of both
@eigenrobot It sounds like keeping death a mystery is no longer an option. Feed on the he knowledge of death. Explain in minute detail how eating keeps you alive, and how getting old makes death more likely. Transition from fear of the unknown/scary/sad to knowledge is power.
@eigenrobot oh poor kiddo, i hope she grows out of it. feels like an anxiety thing, idk, tbh i never grew out of this but i think it's grown more manageable. but also i never mentioned it to my parents and i bet you guys are rly helpful
@eigenrobot Sorry to hear this. Have you taught your daughter to pray? Do you pray with her? Also, for some reason the idea is in my head that a lot of the time restating the child’s concerns is the best assuagement. “Yes, you don’t want to die.”
@eigenrobot When our son passed away, our daughter went through a lot of fear and distress. It helped her to acknowledge that the things she was afraid of COULD happen AND that they were unlikely. There are also grief books for children. This one worked best for us: https://t.co/W9oRGku3Sl
@AJFCPassalacqua https://t.co/1YP0OO8p8s
the other night at bedtime she was again upset about dying and I tried explaining souls and the idea of heaven to her, but I think it was too abstract to register. it's very puzzling. and heartbreaking, to hear a four year old plaintively confide that she doesn't want to die.
I have 6yo baby boy raising slightly baptist/anti-low conviction At 4yo i remember he enjoyed relating to himself, so would it be formative to talk about being someone the bees thank for being around? Someone thats a light and aid to everyone? Idk y'alls position here, just trying to help
@eigenrobot My daughter occasionally tells me she wants to die so she can see her sister again https://t.co/HSquX3w117
@eigenrobot I may not be a Christian, but there used to be merit to this. Sorry, I could not find a better clip of the scene. https://t.co/Ec5b9EVyVU
@pegobry_en https://t.co/0m7pcgbQyU
the other night at bedtime she was again upset about dying and I tried explaining souls and the idea of heaven to her, but I think it was too abstract to register. it's very puzzling. and heartbreaking, to hear a four year old plaintively confide that she doesn't want to die.
@eigenrobot my oldest had the same, and eventually concluded that if people did not die, we'd be running out of space for new people, which would suck, so death is net fine alas, this was followed up by the question how heaven is dealing with the space issue
@eigenrobot honestly, this is the sort of thing religion is good for. look up something like "catholic* guidance for young children that fear death" and there will be some blog post from a diocese in suburban Chicago that gives _Great_ advice, including specific talking points
@eigenrobot Make Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant her next bedtime story she will grow to be immortality's strongest warrior https://t.co/lGSCJVf63v
My guess is that many kids (and adults) can tell on a gut level when they're being told stuff to placate them vs more authentic genuine answers. This can be hard because parents are often giving the same "placation" answers to themselves. Death gives meaning to life? No, life gives meaning to life
@eigenrobot I have personally integrated death through the simple rubric of 'I wasn't alive before I was born and that was fine, so being not alive after death will be the same way' I'm not 100% convinced of this but that's how I've explained it to children anyway and it's okay 🤷♂️