How do you teach a four year old about death?
Thankfully, my four year old son has never had to see any people die. But he nevertheless got into some kind of panic about the concept of death recently.
The trouble started when he got confused about the connection between getting older and getting bigger.
“When I’m five,” he asked, “Will I be as big as Mummy?”
“No,” I answered. “Maybe you’ll be bigger than Mummy when you are 16.”
“And when will I be bigger than you, Daddy?” he asked. “Will I be bigger than you when I am 100?”
I laughed. “No. When you are 100, I will be dead.”
He didn’t seem upset at the time, just a bit confused. He had never experienced death as a problem for humans. Perhaps the only time we had previously discussed death in front of him was when we bought poison in case we had any trouble with cockroaches.
But a few days later, when I was about to brush his teeth, my son suddenly started sobbing uncontrollably. “I don’t want you to die, Daddy!” he said.
“I’m not going to die for a long time, don’t worry!” I said. “And anyway, when I die, I’ll go to Heaven. It will be great in Heaven. Maybe I can meet God there, and I can ask him lots of questions. And when you get very, very, very old, you can meet me in Heaven again!”
By the way, as I see it, there are no cockroaches in Heaven. They go to their own afterlife, I think.
I thought I had solved my son’s tears and panic about death. But I think I talked about Heaven just a bit too much. A few days later, my son started crying again. “I want to go to Heaven now!” he said.
No wonder people came up with religions, in order to have an easier answer to give to these sorts of questions.
Vocabulary:
to sob – to cry noisily, making loud gasps for air between tears
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