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Explaining Death
Speaker
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi all, I haven't been around in a (long) while, but I wanted to talk through an issue that's bedeviling me at the moment. In some ways the Help/Advice forum seemed more appropriate, but the rules governing discussion over there are pretty tight and what I really want is a more freewheeling kind of exploration.
So my family dog is at the end, and I have a four year old daughter. I'm kind of at a loss for how to explain the need to put the dog down to Maisie. Just laying it out seems a bit too heavy for a four year old, but we're not religious so the sort of inviting evasions about the dog going to heaven aren't really going to make sense to her. Complicating this is that she often sees her great grandparents who are in a nursing home, and I'm intensely conscious that how we handle the dog's passing is going to condition her ability to make sense of the much heavier stuff surrounding their passing sometime in the next few months/years.
So any reflections on your own experiences with the death of childhood pets, parenting advice, explorations of honesty with children issues etc. are welcome. How should these things be handled?
So my family dog is at the end, and I have a four year old daughter. I'm kind of at a loss for how to explain the need to put the dog down to Maisie. Just laying it out seems a bit too heavy for a four year old, but we're not religious so the sort of inviting evasions about the dog going to heaven aren't really going to make sense to her. Complicating this is that she often sees her great grandparents who are in a nursing home, and I'm intensely conscious that how we handle the dog's passing is going to condition her ability to make sense of the much heavier stuff surrounding their passing sometime in the next few months/years.
So any reflections on your own experiences with the death of childhood pets, parenting advice, explorations of honesty with children issues etc. are welcome. How should these things be handled?
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She's going to spend a decent amount of her thinking life trying to come to grips with death as a concept. I think the main thing is probably to emphasize, that your dog at least, isn't going to suffer - that she's being put to sleep because she's suffering and won't get better, and is at the end of a long life.
Which I guess is the key point: that currently at least, you can live for a long time, but not forever.
Talk about how the family dog has had a full life, that its a part of nature for all things to pass on. Even using broad terms like "peace" are fair game without falling into religious trappings.
Experiencing loss is also a natural part of life, and it is okay to feel sad/bad about it.
The dog will live on in your memories of the time you had with it.
You can probably build a really good conversation around these points that is kid-friendly and helps them cope with what will be a very sad period of time.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I'm not sure a four year old will really understand what's happening, regardless, but I'm also not sure it will make a giant difference no matter how you deal with it. You might be projecting too much understanding on to your child.
Not saying you shouldn't be delicate about it, but I don't think there's a need to sugarcoat it too much.
How'd that work out?
I still have vivid memories of coming home from school as a child and seeing my mother crying on the front step, waiting to tell me our dog had been put down. I was distraught, but it didn't last. Kids seem pretty mentally resilient in that way.
The Lady Chanus was told as a kid that her dog was sent to a farm and, apparently, never thought twice about it until I made a joke when we were first dating about something "being sent off to the farm" (I don't remember the context).
Then it dawned on her.
And that's the story of how I ruined her childhood twenty years later :P
I sobbed like a five year old bceause I was and asked her wahat was wrong with the kitty, why did you throw him away and she responded "Oh shut up he's just dead." Being a crazy religious nut she had drilled heaven into my head by then so I asked if he was going to heaven; she said no, animals don't go to heaven get in the car we're late etc etc.
Two years later she one upped herself by showing us our german shepard who'd been run over, cold and stiff in a trash pit which they then doused with gas and lit on fire.
So yeah as long as you do it a little less harsh then that, you'll probably be good although I don't see how you couldn't assuming you're sober when you do it. :P
And anyway your daughter may well understand more about death than you know.
I think if you just talk about it with love and honesty and support she will be fine. Not happy, mind. Tremendously upset, and that's hard for us parents. But learning to deal with grief is something she's going to have to do, you can't avoid it.
I think euthanasia and the difference in rights between a human and an animal is much more difficult for her. In your situation I might well try to gloss over that aspect. She could get really confused. But the death part I would just be straight about, myself.
HOLY SHIT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Yeah, that's a great point. Her being there when he goes will do more then you ever could hope to do with laguage alone and it will most likely be a HUGELY positive thing. I've been there for several pets I've had to put to sleep and I was pratically fetal with grief but I'd never give up any of those experiences.
Honestly, I wouldn't. It's hard for someone that young to imagine a state where it would be better to have nothing then anything but I wouldn't shield her from something that's a very natural part of life.
But you know best, she did come out of your penis after all.
Why put her through that too? I think it's better to just let the death be a thing that happened to the pet, instead of adding an extra, much more complex layer.
Because she will undoubtedly learn the truth later and you run a risk of her feeling betrayed because you didn't tell her the whole truth. There's no "too early" to start dealing with stuff like death; kids can handle a lot more then we give them credit for.
edit: That's not the "right" way to do it, mind, that's just my justification for how I would handle it. If Speaker chooses not to, it's perfectly ok.
I may have to go home and check on my kitties.
brb calling my kitties
In my experience, little kids aren't that likely to get really angry about "learning the truth" about these kind of things (after having been told something inaccurate), especially if they learn the truth when they're still comparatively young. Honesty kind of needs to be doled out in smallish doses.
As to the dying pet, I would just be delicately honest about it. We lost a pet when Maddie was 4-ish, and we just explained that he was very sick and unhappy, and that death would end his unhappiness. She had lots and lots of questions, which we answered as best we could. I would maybe leave out the euthanasia part for now, because it's not key to understanding death.
Prepare yourself to be discussing this for years. Expect questions about when she's going to die, and when you're going to die, and when's grandma going to die, and what happens when you die, and so on. We just go with, "Not for a very long time," and usually that's sufficient.
The biggest thing for me, and the advice I'd give, is to let them know that it is a really sad thing, and it's ok to be sad about it, to cry about it, etc.
As someone with no kids, I really feel people should be open with them, especially about unavoidable facts of life. Things die. We'll die, she'll die. Shielding children from death is ridiculous. Yes it is unpleasant, but it is a fundamental nature of our mortality. She might as well get used to it sooner rather than later.
Thats some fucked up shit right there.
In the case of a dog needing to be put down, I think the whole "well he's alright and he's not alright" sort of makes a lot of sense. Clearly, the dog is dead, so no, not ok. On the other hand, the dog isn't suffering anymore, so that's good.
Last year when my wife's grandmother died, our daughter was almost two and a half. My wife and I aren't religious and didn't want to bring heaven and all that into the discussion, but planned on generally being pretty open. We told her her great grandma had died, she was old and sick, and sometimes when people are very old or very sick they die.
We tried as best we could to answer her questions, which were relatively straightforward - mostly that her great grandma wouldn't ever wake up (she thought she was sleeping at the showing) and that she wouldn't see her again. We told her that her great grandma loved her, and it's ok to be sad and miss her.
Basically, that was it. Answer her questions as best you can, try to avoid more complex topics, and don't be surprised if you get lots of questions about the same thing. If she asks if she's going to die if she gets sick, it's ok to tell her no, only if you get really sick / old.
If you've made it four years, you can handle it. The big thing is to teach her that death is something that happens, and it's ok to be sad / miss the pet or person who died. Remember that it's a hard topic for anyone to deal with, and it's ok to tell her that you don't know (i.e. what happens after we die / where we go) or that we are 'at peace', 'a better place', 'in heaven', etc.
I'd avoid discussing euthanasia just because it's a complex and difficult topic, and she's probably going to have trouble understanding the nuance that's involved with it. I wouldn't bring her in when they give the shot, but if I did I'd just tell my daughter that the dog is really sick, when we get really sick we see doctors / dogs see vets, and the doctors are trying to help and giving the dog 'medicine'.
Best of luck to you...like I said, if you've made it four years, you can make it through this. Be ready to answer lots of questions, or even for your daughter not to have really any questions at all.
Around the time I was four a lot of my grandfather's older brothers were dying off and over the next couple years it became a regular thing that we'd go to a funeral every few months.
By the time our first cat died I was 9 or so and I felt a ton more grief since I knew full well what death was and this was cat a part of a family that I interacted with daily, but after a couple of days of heavy crying we all moved on from there okay.
Also @Magic Pink I want to treat your mother to a wonderful night out and then never call her again
Nothing in this universe could protect a person like that if I ever met them.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
There's no easy way to learn that everything has an expiry date.
I wouldn't even bother with the 'medicine' part. Dog was sick so it went to the doctor. Doctor tried to help, but couldn't make it better. So the dog died.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Then she'll be afraid of dying whenever she goes to the doctor. Either the doctor helps or...kaput.
My first experience with death (that I can remember) happened when I was about five. My mom kept a horse at a nearby stable that housed various farm animals, and we visited the place often. One day I was wandering around the grounds and I came across a dead chick. It had clearly been killed by one of the horses as it had been flattened in a grotesquely cartoon fashion and was still lying in the hoofprint where it had met its doom.
I was determined it could be saved, though. If television had taught me anything, all we'd have to do was take it to a vet where the chick could be inflated back to its original shape and, *poof*, good as new! So I raced back to my parents and told them what I'd found.
I was so angry when they didn't even try to save it and buried it behind a corral instead. I'm positive they explained to me that the poor thing was dead and couldn't be revived, but my brain refused to register it. Whether that was out of stubbornness or ignorance, I'm still not sure.
Also, even though you aren't really a Christian, you should still acknowledge that Fred Rogers was the third coming of Jesus.
Thanks for all your thoughts guys.