Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Fearing death - asking big questions

That is tricky... For instance, we know that we die (science and observation) but do we really know what happens after? Nope.

Can you isolate specifically what it is that scares him? Is it the process of death or the unknown that comes after? On the other hand, if you analyze it too much with him you might just give him more to obsess about and be afraid of. Sometimes less discussion is more.

I've just tried to normalize it with my kids. Because they're older, we can talk about things like species survival ("wow. imagine if everyone who'd ever been born was still alive? there'd be no food left." etc).

Normalize, and model calmness. "It happens to everyone eventually - it must be ok." Or... "I can't prevent it from happening eventually, so I'm not going to stress myself out about it, and I'm going to trust that it will be ok." (I'm referring to healthy acceptance, and not reckless disregard: "It doesn't matter what I do - eventually I'm going to die anyway." You know what I mean.)

I used to be really afraid of it too. Now I'm ok. (LOL I worked with a girl years ago who was looking forward to it - not out of depression, but out of curiosity! "I can't wait to see what it's like!")

Once they can read, though-- they DO pick it up casually and from the media.

YOU may never have said "this could kill you, you know..." but it's possible that he has determined this from sources other than you. It may also not be the best idea long-term to DENY the potentially fatal aspect-- just noting that this can lead to trust issues later when they discover that your early explanations were lies of omission. Just something to consider there.

I know several people who have had this happen with their school-aged kids in the wake of a major news story about a fatality. With HG+ kids, it's a real concern because they are simply nowhere near as oblivious to adult conversations as those adults often seem to think that they are. Teachers, sitters, family friends, etc-- basically anyone that knows that your child has an epipen can do it out of the blue. There isn't any "unhearing" those things for our kids, either. KWIM?

It's amazing the kinds of insensitive things that get said around kids, sometimes. I mean, they aren't oblivious! I've also found that my DD sometimes doesn't tell me for a few weeks about things that bother her. (Thinking about the art class instructor that informed her that she should "see this chiropracter" she knew, for a "cure" for her allegies, for example... this REALLY bothered her because she thought that maybe it was real-- she was four-- and that perhaps we didn't care enough to cure her, or that we didn't KNOW about this cure, and that called into question our competence, her specialists competence, etc. Aughhh.)


If this is (or is ever) an issue that requires addressing, one helpful tip is to offer 'differentiating' characteristics to your child in a way that reassures him/her that s/he is NOT going to become a statistic. "We always carry your epinephrine, even if we don't think that we will be eating anything." "It sounds like this person needed a LOT less of the allergen than you have in the past in order to cause a reaction like that." "This is why we are always careful to ask questions in restaurants." "It sounds as though this person didn't get help from her friends right away when she knew she was in trouble, huh?" I also play the doctor-expert card periodically with particularly nasty issues, like the one with the artsy teacher that thought that woo was the solution...

The bottom line is that focusing on how preventable most of those fatalities are can be helpful to kids with life-threatening medical conditions, but only up to a point. Beyond that point, they have to develop the emotional resilience to manage those realistic concerns that are extraordinary, and to do so with healthy coping. It can be a tall order.

I'll echo others: be careful with your assumption that an atheist world-view must be the worst. My experience also bears out that this is not what troubles even a highly sensitive child. Hanni has been okay for quite a long time with the idea that when we die, our bodies become part of the earth, and our minds just stop existing.

Instead, what upsets her is (for the past year) thoughts of violent death and violence between people, and (more recently) thoughts of her loved ones dying, and her desire that she and I die at the same time.

I almost think this is the most peaceful ending... to just... stop. Like a slowly falling leaf that's landed on the grass.

It's hard to wrap my head around. What would that be like? To just no longer exist. It's interesting, isn't it? Our brains are centres of chemical/electrical activity that can certainly be shut off, but our consciousness too? Unless that's just part of the chemicals and electricity. I don't blame my former co-worker for being curious. I guess we won't know until it happens.

Boy, lots to respond to. I've tried the, I'm afraid too, I don't want to die, but we do and we don't think about it daily approach. Tried the, billions of people on earth, new ones born all the time talk, tried the I don't know, I've never done it approach....

I think his main fears are that it will hurt, and the whole concept, that I am my body, so if my body rots..ahhh. Also just fear of the unknown..what will heaven be like?

I really think it has nothing to do with food allergy fears. He talk about dying at 100..not in relation to what he eats.

I think he might have emotional OE, but not sure..maybe he is just five;). He is intense though!

Explaining faith is hard for me. I'm not strong faith wise; I'm a prove it type.

Maybe he'd like to explore a variety of faith traditions' beliefs in after-life existence?

It seems like my DD was about 4-6 when we explored some of those concepts-- not with a right/wrong approach, just with a "this is what this religious tradition holds to be true," kind of logic.

She found some of them silly, some of them weird, some repellent, and some too strange to really gets one's head completely around.

We let her know that ALL of those are appropriate responses, since this is all belief-based, and that different people can believe really, really different things.

One stressor that can emerge pretty early is with a child that faces the reality that their own inner landscape, faith-wise, is incompatible with family traditions. Some faiths are better about that than others. My own family pretty much espouses the notion that I'm going to burn in a lake of fire, incidentally... and this was a clear outcome in my mind by the time I was about seven. It made me very sad.

HK, we haven't neglected to mention that anaphalaxis could kill him, but we don't talk about that much, focusing instead on, it is extremely likely that if you have epi-pens, you will be fine. Sure he has picked up on things, but I don't see the stress with eating or fear associated with that. I could be wrong, but my parent instinct says, no.

I do worry about digging too deep, because I don't want him to focus too much on it. Right now, all the fear and crying comes at night, when his brain has turned off everything else. But I get just interest questions, without the fear throughout the day.

For him, just ceasing is the worst possible case. But we aren't atheist, so I'm not even going to bring that up. It might be poetic for some, but not us.

At this stage, I'd think exploring more options would only confuse him more????

phey, I think you've already gotten great advice above, and I also think that for the most part this is a phase that will most likely pass. The one thing that I would add is - have you tried gently asking questions to see if something set off this particular phase? My dds have gone through worries like this, but in each case there was something subtle that I didn't realize had happened until I really got them talking outside of their fears. For instance, with my allergic dd, she'd watched a show about anaphylaxis on tv that I had no idea she'd seen. This happened around 6 years old, and she had known prior to that time that her allergies could kill her - she knew it intellectually and factually, but she'd never thought of it in an emotional way and the show (a child had anaphylaxis, didn't die, but went to the ER etc and death was talked about - I think) - seeing it that way triggered fears in an emotional way that she hadn't experienced before. Same dd also had a phase of fears of death when she was thinking about her unknown birthparents (she was adopted), realized that they might die before she ever meets them, and then without me realizing she was thinking through any of this, moved on to worries about her own death. My younger dd worries about death too - more from a fear of God type thing. We are a family of faith, but she processes that faith in a very different way than I do and differently than my values are that I try to pass on to my kids. So even though *I* am not teaching my children to fear death, she's been through a phase where she saw it as a very scary thing based on her interpretation of religion. You can't believe the intellectual entanglements we argued around when she was going through that phase!

I hope your ds is feeling better about things very soon - sending him a hug!

polarbear

It really depends upon personality. My daughter led me into discussions that I would never have deliberately embarked upon with a child so young. I would have sworn, if I'd been asked, that it wasn't a concern for her, or that if it was, that such a conversation would merely confuse/upset her further.

But I was often wrong about that.

I had assumed that because my DH and I are firmly non-theistic in our worldview, that this would (naturally) be how she sees the world, as well. It's not. Just as my mother would have SWORN that her worldview (being "correct") would be all I needed, I imagine. It wasn't, either-- it felt inauthentic and troubling, even when I was quite young.

SO. It truly depends on personality and readiness. If your child is one that likes to be told "the" answer, then exploration is probably not a good idea. However, if your child is a "yeah, but..." questioning type, it is a pretty essential part of reaching an inner consensus, or at least a temporary truce with the inner quest to understand.

My mom and I were really not on the same wavelength there. She thought that children (all of them) needed "the" answer, and that HER worldview would be comforting universally because she was so passionate in her faith, and found it profoundly satisfying/true. I wound up feeling alone because it was as though she was dancing to music that I could not hear. I tried to see it her way, but it really just upset me MORE.

Some kids like certainty, and others are perfectly content with ambiguity. My DD and I are both in the latter camp. Her dad is more in the former, and so was my mom. If my DD were like my mom, then a single heartfelt explanation of MY beliefs, gently and comfortingly given, would have been the best way to handle it. My DD wasn't reassured by that-- at all-- so we went with the inquiry-driven model and a lot of Socratic interactions until she found some things that resonated with her and helped her to feel less anxious about it.