I Our DS8 has been really worrying about death/dying over the last few months to the point that he dreads going to sleep at night because he said he can't shut his brain off and his brain tends to start thinking about death
Hi Belle
This is a little tangential to the subject (death) but not to the experience. DS 5 since 4 has had the same thing where he can't shut his brain off. It started alongside what I call the explosion, where he just started devouring books jumping reading levels so fast that he was reading things and we were reading to him things that he could not stop thinking about. Things mildly scary would set him off but sometimes it was just any bit
of information that he was chewing on. We realized that his brain needed to process, he also had scary dreams too, although not really nightmares because they would
come immediately and he would then wake up like 10 minutes after going to sleep but he had been asleep.
Anyway, we came up with the solution of the mindwiper, his term, for a very simple book, initially the board books we kept sentimentally, the mindwipers calm him and give
him something to focus on as he is drifting off but the aren't so compelling as to keep him awake.
So I can't speak to the big existential questions, but practically speaking is there something that DS could do which is a soothing distraction. And the fact that DS is in on it is key, he actually asks for them so it becomes a ritual in and of itself
Hang in there,
DeHe
