Humanist + death what to tell dd1

[lucy01]

Our nanny's grandfather had a stroke last week and it was touch and go for a while (luckily he's ok now). We told dd1 that our nannies GF was very ill in hospital but nothing more. This got us thinking that we need to think how we are going to explain death to her when the right time comes (i.e. when the questions are unavoidable).

She's only 4 but quite bright so will usually ask loads of questions until she is happy that she has got a reasonable answer ("because" has never worked on her!). We are aethists/humanists by belief and I don't feel right talking about heaven/angels/etc as I can't propagate a lie (in my eyes) to her and then give a different explanation down the road.

Anybody faced this - the Humanist website wasn't much good in providing help on this one and I really want to be prepared rather than handle it off the cuff. This issue has the potential to scare her but I want to minimise the impact while giving her something to celebrate.

Help

[Spagblog]

Well in a non religious way, I explained to my 4yr old that when people die their spirit is released back to the world.
The body is no longer them which is why we bury or cremate them.
I explained their spirit is what made them funny and sad and contains all the memories.

[OldieMum]

An elderly aunt of mine, much loved by all of us, including DD (3), died last month. We are atheists. So was my aunt. We explained it in a very straightforward way - that when you die, you no longer exist. We had mentioned this casually in the past. DD was not upset by this information, but it is taking her a long time to understand the finality of death. She keeps thinking that my aunt will come back. She is also concerned about when we, and she, will die. We explain that all that is so far away that she musn't worry about it. All this has led onto conversations about how all animals and plants die and that babies and plant seeds are a renewal of life.

My aunt was a biologist, and a particularly militant atheist, so her children decided that it would be more appropriate to donate her body to the medical school where she died than to have a funeral. We have also explained this to DD and she seems to understand. There will be a celebration of her life and bench-commemoration in one of the London Parks next month. DD (and other young children) are going along. We would not have taken her to a funeral, however.

[Bugsy2]

Lucy01, could you just say that a person's body dies because they are old or poorly but that the person lives on through all the people who remember them.

[Twiglett]

I don't know what a humanist is but I told DS this

I put my hand in a glove (well actually a sock cos I couldn't find a glove) and wiggled my fingers

I said "this is you, the glove is your body. When you die you leave your body behind" I kept wiggling my fingers as I took them out of the glove to keep his attention on my hand and laid the glove down. "so the bit that is you I call your spirit and that keeps going on" mad swoops with hand to make him laugh "but you have left your body behind because you don't need it anymore"

HTH

PS .. to this he said 'oh'

[podkin]

lol Twiglett, what a nice way to explain it, and lol at 'Oh'.

[SueW]

YOu need to suss out what you think death is before you can explain it to her.

Is death the end?

Do you believe people live on in any way?

Do people have spirits?

DD was familiar with the Lion King at 3yo when her Nana died but now she's older and asks about death I talk to her about my vague thoughts which are like Bugsy - that people aren't with us anymore but that they could be said to live on as long as someone remembers them. Thus some people live on for a long time (world leaders, famous people whose statues we see) and others don't. As to what happens to the person who has died - well none of us really know the answer to that, do we, no matter what we believe? I don't see why 'I don't know' shouldn't be a perfectly acceptable answer.

[DominiConnor]

Richard Feynman said that he would live on as the way the way people saw the world.

As for passing on my view, it's hard line extinction, and it's an interesting ethical question whether to share it. Maybe there are spirits, but that can't affect the ultimate outcome.

Imagine that my argument was compelling, would I be doing you any favours by explaining it ?

If it's not compelling then what's the point ?

With 2.0 we've not gone into much detail, but have explained death as much the same as the breakdown of other mechanisms. No great trauma.

[Hattie05]

Dd is three, she knew the term 'dead' from seeing insects etc dying.

More recently we have had to explain further due to personal circumstances. I simply told her that when we come to the end of our lives, we die. She went on naming family members and asking if each one was going to die. I said yes but hopefully not for a long time, because usually we wait until we are very very old and have finished living. She asked if the person who had died was sad. I said no, because they are not here anymore, they cannot feel sad or happy or anything anymore, it is only us that are sad as we will miss that person, but that is normal and ok to be sad.
She then changed the subject to something completely irrelevant and hasn't been concerned about death since!

[Hattie05]

I meant to say, if you don't believe in heaven etc, then why do you have any concerns about not telling your dd about them? If you are happy what you believe in, then you should be happy that your dd will cope with what you tell her.

[TheBystander]

My dds' frined's Grandad dies recently.
dd asked me all about where they go and i told her various options that people beleive. (Heaven, reincarnation, nothingness).
She asked what i thought and i said i'd like to think we went to meet our family who had already died and lived on in spirit.
I think i'll let her just figure out what she wants to beleive.

[Blu]

I have told DS, 4, that when we die, we just stop being alive, and we don't know anythinng about it, just llke we didn't know anything before we were born. And that it was nothing to be afriad of, it was just one of those things.

He asked if I would still love him after I had died, and I said that in his own heart he would always know that I loved him, and he loved me, whether I was alive or dead.

[puddle]

I have told ds something along the lines of Bugsy's desciption of people living on in the minds and memories of those who love them. He is familiar too with the Lion King's circle of life and was very matter of fact about it all.

Now he's in yr 2 they have started to learn about how other religions deal with the afterlife. He seems to be able to take all this in in a 'people believe lots of different things - you will be able to decide what you believe' kind of way.

[lucy01]

Thanks all. Twiglet love the hand in sock/glove story - good starting point.

[Ellbell]

More prosaic than some of the suggestions made here (which I really like), but when we had to have our dog put down dd1 came up with her own explanation, which satisfied her and her younger sister (they were 2.5 and 4.5 at the time). She just said 'Bobby has gone out of the world'.

[Elibean]

Love Twiglett's sock and Ellbell's dd's line...my grandmother is nearly 99, and my 2 yr old dd asks about her a lot. I'm preparing for the near future, lots of food for thought here.

Will add that I was scared (after great granny died) about my parents dying, at age about 6 or 7, and being told 'don't worry its not going to happen for ages' didn't reassure me one bit. Maybe because my parents didn't seem that comfortable with the whole concept of death themselves.