(Inadequately) Talking to My Kid About Death

This past year, our family has experienced the death of my grandma and the recent deaths of both my husband's father and our family dog, Sammy. In the midst of grief, we had to deliver our own poorly-planned, scrambled explanations of death to our youngest son Aaron, who is 11 and has Down syndrome. At the best of times, I have a hard time guessing what's going on in Aaron's head. His cognitive disability means that he doesn't always acknowledge his understanding in ways that we comprehend. His emotions and attempts to communicate can come out as misdirected behavior. The challenge is to be compassionate and patient with him during hard family times. I do know that I don't know what happens after someone dies. We are lacking in organized faith, and this isn't helpful at these times. When Aaron's great-grandma passed away last March, we gave him a simple explanation that Grandma Joan was very old (she was 92) and that her body was broken. This felt true. To answer the question of "where did Grandma go?" we leaned upon my mom's explanation of where her own father went when he died in a coal mining accident when my mom was only 4 years old. "Grandma is up in the stars, looking down on us," we told Aaron. We stuck with the same explanation when his Grandpa Barry died earlier this month. My father-in-law's death was more difficult to explain, because he wasn't nearly as old as Aaron's great grandma. "Grandpa's heart stopped working," we said, rather inadequately. We said he's u...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news