How To Talk To Your Kids About Death? This Mom Explains

Dev was 3.6 years old when the topic of death surfaced. The unit at his school that term was ‘Who we are’, a large part of which included learning about family, friends and relationships. One weekend, his homework was to create a family tree. With the help of his parents, he had to stick pictures of his immediate family members. This exercise was, of course, to encourage the kids to learn how he was related to each family member and how they were related to each other.

So, Dev sat with my husband, found photographs of each person in our immediate family, cut them and stuck them on the tree in the book. My father-in-law passed away when my husband was 18. Dev being the inquirer that he is, had questioned who the gentleman in the photos whom he had never met was, from the time he could string a sentence together. He was told that he was his ‘Ajooba’, which means ‘Grandfather’ in Marathi. However, when the family tree exercise was in progress, Dev asked “Mama, where is Ajooba? How come I don’t ever see him?”

Explaining it the right way:

We often underestimate young kids and assume that complicated topics are not warranted until they are much older, so we tend to avoid them. What we tend to forget is that although it may seem like a difficult subject to approach for us, when broken down into simple age-appropriate language, kids understand just fine. In fact, from my personal experience, the younger they are the easier it is to explain things to them. Their view of the world is so pure and untainted when they are young, so they do not already have pre-conceived notions about anything. I have always been a firm believer in addressing difficult topics with my kids from the time they could communicate. So, when Dev asked him where his Ajooba was, we told him that he had gone up to God. I had already mentally prepared myself for the day that this discussion would arise, so that included mustering up the calm demeanour and strength to answer the stream of questions that ensued.