Dealing with death and preschoolers

The subject itself is pretty self-explanatory and time and time again, I am faced with it in my classroom.  When it comes to dealing with it, as a teacher, I take on the personal approach.  At this point I feel like  my teacher hat comes off, and the friend hat goes on.  Currently, I have two students undergoing this life experience and both situations are incredibly saddening.  One is witnessing a family member slowly passing on and the other recently had a family member killed in a car accident.  Let's start with the first scenario.

When it comes to children witnessing and experiencing an upcoming death, I tell parents to keep the kids in the "know".  Although there will be times that you need to shield them, it is highly important that kids know what's going on so at the end of it all, they've gotten their closure.  Simply explain that the person is ill, they will not be getting better, and because they won't get better - they will die.  Even the word "die" may need to be defined.  There will be lots of confusion, maybe emotional resistance into accepting the inevitable.  But, they need to know.  Why?  Because when the time comes, they will have better acceptance and more importantly, it's a life lesson we all have to go through at some point. 

Depending on age, kids will have questions because if they are over the age of four years and up, their memory starts to become more reliable.  And depending on how traumatic the experience is, they may still remember 20 years later.  Therefore, how the parent decides to handle it, will result into those memories. So, those questions need to be answered.  And truthfully.  As much as many believe sugar-coating is the best alternative because they are so young, it only does further damage later on.  I have known families to do as such, and years later, the children claiming they do not recall any memory of it because they were not involved or, had closure. 

Children need to experience death and they need to see the process in order to gain their own personal closure.

Now, I'm referring to human beings in this but I guess the same information can be helpful if it's the family dog too.

With student number two, his family is experiencing the sudden death of a family member.  I won't go into details but it's a very sad situation.  The child knows fully on what happened and now it's a matter of how he deals with it.  He told me that he felt sad and didn't know what to say or do.  I told him that it was perfectly normal to feel that way as no one does when such news is delivered.  With such a situation, all one can do for someone so young in handling such news, is listen.  The more we listen, the more we can acknowledge and reassure.  As adults, if we can do that, then we are being the support system those kids are looking for.  This will also enforce the importance of involvement - conversation, respect for the child and their feelings, and being a listener. 

I am not an expert.  I am not a grieving counsellor.  I am just a preschool teacher.  This is all about how my approach is and it could be completely off.  Or not at all.  But if I know kids for as long as I have been working with them (10 years and counting), like everything else, they need to be involved in all experiences.  Even ones involving loss.