{"id":1367,"date":"2013-04-29T15:30:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T21:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/2013\/04\/29\/ng-to-my-preschooler-about-death\/"},"modified":"2013-04-29T15:30:16","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T21:30:16","slug":"ng-to-my-preschooler-about-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/ng-to-my-preschooler-about-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking to My Preschooler About Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, Dearest<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There is no single person who has known me longer than my mother.<\/strong> From a cellular level<\/em> \u2013 from the time God knit me in my mother\u2019s womb (Psalm 139:13) \u2013 we have shared our lives.<\/p>\n

On December 29th, my dear Gramma Ann, my mother\u2019s mother, passed away unexpectedly. The woman who had known my own mother since she was no more than a spark is gone. Apart from my own loss, it is difficult to know how to comfort my mom. I don\u2019t know the practical answer \u2013 I just know that my heart says to call a little more often, to pray for peace and comfort for my mother and her sister, and to love my mom the best I can.<\/p>\n

The reaction that did require practical application was discussing Gramma\u2019s passing with Paisley, my four-year-old daughter. Paisley attended the private family service for my grandmother, and I knew I\u2019d need to prepare her in an age-appropriate way for what death means, where God is in the midst of loss, and for the very basic issues of viewing the body and respecting the emotions of those around her.<\/p>\n

I sat down with Paisley to share with her that Gramma had died, and she was in Heaven with Jesus. I didn\u2019t dramatize the details, and I didn\u2019t offer a lengthy explanation. I asked her if she had questions, and initially she was more excited about the prospect of travel and visits with Nana and Papa than she was in the subject of Gramma.<\/p>\n

In the days following, Paisley would stop suddenly to ask, \u201cGramma Ann is dead, right?\u201d or \u201cGramma Ann is in Heaven? Can we see her?\u201d I let her know that we couldn\u2019t see Gramma now, but we\u2019d go to Heaven someday to join her, and she\u2019d be glad to see us.<\/p>\n

The day of the family service, I prepared Paisley beforehand. She asked, \u201cBut why are people sad, mama? Gramma is in Heaven, right?\u201d I told her that even though we were happy that Gramma was in Heaven, we would miss her very much until we saw her again. I reminded her that Gramma Ann was Nana\u2019s mommy \u2013 the kind of fact she finds fascinating. Before and again after the service, we viewed Gramma\u2019s body in the casket and I allowed Paisley to touch her hands and ask more questions. I reminded Paisley that this was just Gramma\u2019s body, since the inside part, her soul, was in Heaven. She commented that Gramma felt \u201cmushy,\u201d and I accepted her thoughts without judgment. I was four years old myself when Grandpa Olie, my mom\u2019s father, passed away. Somehow all these years later I still remember my fascination with the waxy feeling of his hands after death. It was important to let Paisley experience this event with her own feelings, in her own words.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a month since my grandmother died. Paisley doesn\u2019t ask about her every day, but she occasionally says she is \u201cpretending to be dead.\u201d I don\u2019t make a big deal of it. She has asked a few times about the casket. \u201cGramma is buried under the dirt, right?\u201d Then I remind her that Gramma is in Heaven, and it\u2019s just her body in the ground. Burial is an odd concept for a child to grasp, so I don\u2019t discourage this kind of question.<\/p>\n

Death is an inevitable part of life, and this has been an opportunity to help my daughter grow and learn, and a chance to talk about the serious side of faith. After all, I\u2019ve known my little girl since she was just a spark, and we are going through this life together.<\/p>\n

For more resources on talking to kids about death, check out Susan Wallace\u2019s article, The Beginnings of Talking About “The End,” in the February 2013 issue of MomSense magazine.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, Dearest There is no single person who has known me longer than my mother. From a cellular level \u2013 from the time God knit me in my mother\u2019s womb (Psalm 139:13) \u2013 we have shared our lives. On December 29th, my dear Gramma Ann, my mother\u2019s mother, passed away unexpectedly. The woman who had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,117],"tags":[120,48,101],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-wellness","tag-liz","tag-loss","tag-parenting"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}