Resources for How to Talk To Children About Death

Sometimes when a little person starts to wonder about death and dying a parent can worry about how much or how little to say.

The most important thing to know is that you will be doing an amazing job and you know your child best. The second most important thing is that you are open to talking about it at a level they understand and is as much as they want to know. Don’t brush it under the carpet because you might be uncomfortable about it.

(check out “Things to Remember When Answering Children’s Questions”)

If you really can’t do it, perhaps ask a close family member or friend who knows your child well and is comfortable having this conversation. If it’s not talked about then it gets a scary or “bad” feel about it and the child may think it’s a taboo topic. The fact is, death is part of life and you never know when it might happen. A child who knows this has a better chance of growing up with resilience, and is better prepared and more able to cope with those curveballs that life throws us along the way…

Developmentally it’s an incredibly hard concept to grasp. For a young child who encounters the death of a pet for example, they may wish to talk about it often until they’ve had enough… for now. Then as they get older they’ll have a new understanding with more questions…

Check out this general guide to children’s ability to conceptualise death depending on their age here.

Some really great books are listed below - there are some are oldies, but goodies, check out your library as well.

The Fall of Freddie the Leaf (Buscaglia, 1982)

Lifetimes (Mellonie & Ingpen, 1983)

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (Violist & Blegvad, 1971)

Goodbye Mousie (Harris & Ormerod, 2001)

The Invisible String (Karst, 2018)

I have most of these books so if you live local I can lend them to you for a short time. Some of them are available on Kindle or you can ask Whitcoulls or PaperPlus to order in for you. If they are not in your library ask them to get them in for you (most libraries are really good with this - you only have to ask…)

Any questions, please get in touch.