Comments on: When Children Ask About Death (or Other Heavy Topics) https://www.janetlansbury.com/2017/02/when-children-ask-about-death-or-other-heavy-topics/ elevating child care Tue, 22 Nov 2022 01:26:20 +0000 hourly 1 By: Annette https://www.janetlansbury.com/2017/02/when-children-ask-about-death-or-other-heavy-topics/comment-page-1/#comment-127861 Tue, 13 Aug 2019 08:17:40 +0000 http://www.janetlansbury.com/?p=17723#comment-127861 Last night we were reading “Love you forever” and my 3 year old suddenly connected the dots when it came to “…as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be”. He asked in the tiniest voice “And when she’s not living anymore? When she dies?” and in an even tinier voice “Will you die someday, mommy?”

Gosh, it really broke my heart and I was not yet prepared for a talk like that. Luckily I had listened to this episode a while ago, so I think I did okay but the question still stream rolled me a bit because I thought he was still too young to think about it.
And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a cry as sad as his when he realized that yes, mommies die too at one point.
It hasn’t come up again this morning, so I’ve got time to prepare myself for the next time.

]]> By: Tomasz Smaczny https://www.janetlansbury.com/2017/02/when-children-ask-about-death-or-other-heavy-topics/comment-page-1/#comment-126872 Thu, 06 Dec 2018 12:11:23 +0000 http://www.janetlansbury.com/?p=17723#comment-126872 Dear Janet,
I have been inspired by your work for more than 2 years now (since before my daughter Tosia was born) and am trying to promote RIE in my home country – Poland, blogging. Let me start by thanking you for your great advice, books and podcasts 🙂
Interestingly for the first time I have not found any answer to my new specific question on your site. As you can imagine, it is related to death and how to talk about it. But I had a different problem than described above and in your other post when you replied ho to handle loss of a loved one.
In my situation I an my wife Natalia simply visited graves of our loved ones in a publice cementary and took Tosia with us. None of those people were known to Tosia before so she has not been through any loss yet. She just turned 2 and I wanted to explain where we are. And got stuck… I wanted to be respectful and honest and said something like “these are places where people lie under ground because they died”. Then suddenly I realised that I wanted to explain a new term – “to die”. So I continued “this means they fell asleep for a very long time”. Then I spoke to some therapist that warned me not to compare being dead to sleeping as it may scare my child to fall asleep.
So I am puzzled. How would you explain to a 2-year old what cementary is and what “to die” means?
Hopefully you will be able to share a comment on this.
Thank you very much and warm regards!

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