Mommy, are mummies real?
Seems like an easy enough question, right? I paused for a minute knowing that this was one of those parental moments. I could just say no, knowing that he was really asking about the scary monster kind, and avoid the whole uncomfortable talk about death. But then what if a fellow know-it-all kindergartner calls me out and makes D feel embarrassed? These five-year-olds love talking about the gross and the gruesome, so a play group chat about real mummies – the kind at the museum, the kind that are “so gross” – was sure to surface.
So, I shakily answered that monster mummies aren’t real, but a long, long time ago in Egypt people would wrap their loved ones who died in cloth strips and these are called mummies and yes, they are real. His response after a thoughtful pause, “Can you say that all again?” Of course after my explanation he had dozens of questions about death and the after life, all of which made me squirm since we really don’t affiliate with one religion, and I think only confused him more. With each response, I opened up another rabbit hole.
I feel very fortunate that we haven’t experienced a real-life tragedy or a loss of a pet, which would require the explaining as well as the grieving. So far questions have come up from movies (why does the dad in How to Train Your Dragon 2 have to die!?) or games (grrr Ninjago). Or the boys will be playing with friends and I’ll hear, “I died you,” and I’ll rush in to change the game into something more pleasant, not related to killing people…sheesh, boys.
Ms. Train had a great post on talking about death with preschoolers. My personal answer to D so far has been that death happens when something in your body stops working. When pried with the, “then whats” keep it very vague. “Well, some people believe this, and some people believe that,” and when the topic of me dying comes up, I just brush it aside with a, “Yes, everyone dies, but I’m not going to die until I’m 100 years old.” Mr. Skateboard was raised on a farm, so death was a part of life, so even having conversations about how dinosaurs died for him is new territory.
I surveyed my fellow neighborhood Moms to see how they handle questions of death and beyond. Many of my friends have their religious faiths as a base for explaining the tricky stuff, while others stumbled along the conversation like I did, or even (magically) avoided it all together.
But, the best answer that I heard from one of my girlfriends, is no answer at all. My friend wisely stated that she admits to her daughter that she doesn’t know what happens after we die, and asks her daughter what she thinks. Pure genius. Her answer reminded me of a section in the book The Conscious Parent By Dr. Shefali Tsabary:
When we parent from the traditional approach, we encourage our children to look-up to us because this is how we were raised. To be good parents, we feel we need to be all-knowing and all-powerful, little do we realize that when we portray ourselves as so competent, we foster inhibition and fear in our children. They look to us and see an image so out of reach that it causes them to feel inordinately small. – pg 45
This quote is a side thought, which could be a whole separate post, but for now, “I don’t know,” is my favorite new answer. Not everything has to be a lesson. Simple is sometimes best, at least until they have the emotional maturity to deal with the facts of life and death.
blogger / cherry / 204 posts
This is such an interesting topic to me, I was sort of obsessed with death as a child, despite being raised Catholic where there was an “answer” given, that answer never made sense to me and I spent most of my life in existential crisis mode, so I’ve thought a lot about how I want to handle that with my children (being that we are not religious). I love the quote you shared and I completely agree with saying “I don’t know” and explaining that different people have different ideas and beliefs about it and asking what think, I always figured I’ll add that this is one of the big beautiful mysteries of life that we continue to wonder about and search for as we grow. Thank you for sharing this!
apricot / 370 posts
we recently went through a loss of our family dog a few months ago, and my daughter, nearly 5. our dog declined quickly and we had to explain to our daughter about death, about losing those we love. it upset her that we were losing her, but it also brought up a really good discussion about death, as hard as it was to explain to her, because it was also hard for me to talk about without crying myself. as you said, one answer led to other questions, but we’ve had some good discussions about it. I did lean on our faith to talk through some of the discussion, but as you said, sometimes an I don’t know is an honest answer.
guest
Fantastic advice, we’ve actually been getting a lot of questions about this lately (thanks to movies like Big Hero and Frozen!). I keep shutting the conversation down but maybe next time I’ll just let it flow . . .
pear / 1696 posts
Cup of Jo recently did a great post on this subject:
http://cupofjo.com/2015/04/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-death/
pea / 5 posts
The best thing I could do for my 8 year old son was quote the lion king when the dad tells simba they become stars or something to the likes of that. My son brought it up after mummies and when his cat died I was so glad we had sort of discussed it because it would have been harder on him. My grandmother died shortly after and he cried then said he was glad grandmomma was going to take care of OG ( the cat.) We don’t practice a religion either but this sounds so amazing to me. I explained that our bodies become dust/dirt and I told him when I die I would like my ashes to be thrown into the ocean and whenever he feels sad he can look at the ocean or stars and momma will be there. My son is special needs and I need him to understand this in case anything happens. It’s a hard subject for sure and I think what you did was great so I’m going to apply it going forward sometimes as well. Thanks for sharing!
blogger / apricot / 310 posts
This is riveting and such a good conversation to start now! I love the concept of being very upfront with “I don’t know” since we also are not religious – and following with “what do you think?” That so succinctly reflects the kind of parent we hope to be. Thanks for this post!