Life can be hard

[darlid01]

My 3 year old daughter goes to school with a little girl named Reka. Reka has a little sister who has had a respiratory problem since birth. Well, Reka's little sister died last night (Well kinda this morning, she was officially pronounced this morning) and we are still mulling over how to explain it to a 3 year old. In the meantime, we are making

Comments

[syntheticjesso]

Honestly, most 3 year olds won't really grasp the concept of death. You can tell her the little girl died, and that it means she's gone to heaven and won't be back. She probably won't really "get" it right away, but she should figure it out eventually.

A coworker's mother passed away about 2 years ago, when her daughter Ashley was about 3. Ashley is a really smart kid, and when she was told she didn't really react. Over the next few days, she started to put the pieces together, and eventually she realized that her grandma was gone for good. It took her a little time though.

Really, just give her the facts, in small words of course, and it'll work out.

[daisho]

I don't come at this as a parent, but it's the sort of question I may also face once I have kids, so I'm thinking about it seriously.

I think you have to be as honest as you can, while couching it in terms a youngster could understand. If you want to go down the Heaven route, I suppose that's an option, but as I'm agnostic I can't really go for that myself. Instead, I think I'd have to try the 'gone to sleep and not waking up' route, but I would use the word death specifically, so they can begin to make the association between it and their experience.

[confusedcious]

Go to your local library - they usually stock picture books for explaining difficult concepts to kids using stories and pictures. I've seen one called Jenny Angel (not sure of the author) that is a girl dealing with a younger sibling dying, but that may be too complicated for a three year old. A children's librarian may be able to help.