Explaining death to children.

[Anomalocaris]

If you want to live a long time don't try to be trim and fit. Work on being frail and decrepit.

Yeah, then when you die no one would notice the difference.

[IAmTheeWallrus]

The power of grief is just amazing.
When my Mom died my brother went on and on about how she was "up there" with this one and that one...

I had never heard him speak of a single such thing as long as I had known him. Far as I know he hadn't been to church since he was like 12. He's over 60 and all of a sudden Mom is flying around with a harp.
I couldn't believe it.
Of course I was devastated also but I was never tempted to resort to fairy tales.

[MJ the Skeptical]

Death definitely shouldn't be sugar-coated but I think it has to be explained gingerly to children. When I found out about death as a young kid I would have bad dreams about death. And I think about death all the time honestly, I hate it, I'm an idealist and I want Transhumanism to come along faster. What I hated about death as a kid was that it could be over for me before I even wake up, or my dogs could be dead when I come home, or my loved ones who may die suddenly or get cancer. I'm still adjusting to death as an adult, I may never get over the sadness of death until I feel like I've had a long life, longer than we can live now, or we have progress in medical health.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

If you want to live a long time don't try to be trim and fit. Work on being frail and decrepit.

Yeah, then when you die no one would notice the difference.

Some people's goal is to be the best looking corpse that ever got thrown in a casket.

[Cato]

I think part of the reason the conversation regarding death is so difficult is because for generations now we have been largely imune to it. People used to face death as a normal part of life. It could be as simple as having to kill, dress, and butcher your own meat. Now we go to a store where cuts are nicely packaged. Hell, beef products are often infused with CO to give us that typical 'fresh' pink color we yearn for. I think it would have been easier to explain death when it was a more natural part of our surroundings.

Not that it was any less traumatic than today, but it really wasn't that long ago when almost everyone would have had some relation that had lost a young child. The sharp increase in life expectancy and the steep drop in infant mortality over the last century has made the experience of death exceedingly rare for any particular individual.

[Minimalist]

but what's your alternative?

"Remember when Froggy died and we flushed him down the toilet? It's like that with daddy."


Probably not, huh?

[Cato]

"Remember when Froggy died and we flushed him down the toilet? It's like that with daddy."

They flushed Froggy????

[Minimalist]

[Jenny A]

I don't think I'd use it with Grampa, but we lost pets during the girls' toddler years. I explained that they were "all gone" like crackers all eaten, and toys broken, but that unlike the crackers they would live on as long as we remembered them.

By the time the family dog died they were just preteen, and the exact truth was easy, especially since the dog had congestive heart failure so we had lots of notice the end was near.

[Dystopia]

You could try finding a better way to comfort children. Maybe not saying the dead person will go to heaven, but something like 'He is now sleeping and comfortable', or he is in a better place (that better place being oblivion, for some a lot better than heaven or hell). Something like that. Just tell the kid that you live and you die, it's like going into sleep and if feels really comfy full of peace and tranquility.