Thanks so much to everyone about this. We had a meeting this past week with his therapist (just a explaination....DS8 was diagnosed with PTSD about a year ago due a traumatic medical event that happened to him...one afternoon we were working on some science projects and he passed out several times in a row - the last time his lips turned blue and he was laying on the floor non-responsive so I called 911 in which he was taken to the hospital in the ambulance and they did countless tests on him...all came back normal...finally it was found by his doctor that he had water in his inner ear causing dizziness and the passing out)...the whole thing was just too much for his little sensitive system and he was really traumatized - the psych diagnosed him with PTSD and he got intensive therapy for almost a year. We turned the corner big time about 3 months ago for the positive and I pretty much have my happy-go-lucky little kid back but this fear of death started from everything that occured.
Associating his passing out with going to sleep at night scares him because he said everything was black and gone and he is afraid to go to sleep because it is too much like when he passed out and now has associated the 2 with dying and how that might be like the same.
His psych said we are handling it in a great way by having discussions with him - DS8 came out with his main fear that death scared him because it was "the end, final, kaput" in his words. The therapist said it was an excellent idea to share different religious views on death and DS was comforted when I told him about how some religions believe in reincarnation (THANK YOU Ultramarina)...so we will keep going down that road. He was also comforted when we spoke about how everything has a cycle and that there are things that will never end such as our love for each other. I just never in a million years thought that I would be having such a deep conversation with my 8 year old child :-) His psych said that DS is very analytical and very mature for his age and that it can cause some problems in that he is still an 8 year in many ways. Thank you so much for the help it means more than you know!
