My son is 6 and an older relative just passed away. Me and his mom both are not sure how much we should expose him to this, if at all. He has met the older relative several times but wasn’t super close.
I guess I’m looking for the Japanese view and also for development, child psychology perspective.
I can’t even remember when I went to a funeral but I was OVER exposed as a kid i think. I probably went to a funeral every month as a kid and I don’t think it was good for my mental health and don’t want to inflict that on my son.
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We started to slowly introduce the concept of death at 4.
There is this small graveyard on the way to one of the parks we frequent, and my daughter asked what it was.
It was a simple enough question, and I had to make the answer equally as simple.
We spoke about a pet my wife has before my daughter was born, one she knows from pictures we have. I explained in so many words that everything has an expiry date. And that it is a natural thing.
That everything starts with birth, and ends with death. We spoke about plants, animals, humans, and even planets.
After that conversation, I shifted the topic for a long time to be focused on the importance of life. How incredibly lucky we and everyone else are for being alive, and what the probability of getting born is. We’re atheists, so religion has never been a part of the conversation regarding the science of things, but explained that different cultures view death differently.
At 8 she had her existential crisis where she became worried about growing old, me and her mum’s looming demise and so on. But the fact that she understood the cycle of life made it easier for her to appreciate life as is, and to accept that growing old is a privilege not everyone is granted.
Japan has a fucked up relationship with death and it cheapens life sometimes. I don’t want her to ever take life for granted.
There are too many casual conversations about suicide on the telly. Suicide in my opinion should not be on the table at all nor should or it be as normalized as it is here.
What do you see when you’re on a train that stopped because someone decided to off themselves? People who are annoyed that they are being inconvenienced…
From the beginning. There are age-appropriate ways to discuss almost anything. Being a less-than-close relative is a good way to introduce the topic.
You can’t protect children from life.
I’m a kindergarten teacher, and kids younger than four quite often say that something died while they’re playing, like a toy animal or whatever. It’s not something people seem to keep children away from here, though the kids certainly don’t fully understand what it actually means.
Around 2 the first time, as both my wife grand parents died a week apart.
Not sure she really understood what was going on but she knew they were not there anymore. We told her they were only pictures now.
Then last year when she was 5 my grand mother died, went back to my home country with her (she wanted to come, I explained her before what was the purpose to go there), she saw my grand mother on her deathbed (again, I explained before and she was the one who wanted to see her), same for the burial ceremony.
As long as you take the time to explain and you let them after decide if they want to be part of it or not, they will understand, just don’t force anything.
First time I went in my home country I was in my late twenties
I’ve never been to a funeral in Japan (yet)
I say spare your kids
My kid brought up the topic around age of 3-4
We’ve been discussing it ever since.
I think it would be cruel to leave your kid alone (=not discuss) with such a huge and frightening topic.
I think it comes about around the same time as ‘how babies are born’
I took both of my sons when their great-grandmother passed away. That time…. age 2 and the other 8 months.
Death unfortunately has always surround us. We regularly explain to them (now age 5 and 3) that the photo of the other baby in the home is their deceased older sister, that she is an angel in the sky. They don’t quite understand, but our dog did pass away last year, thus we just said the dog is “not here anymore” and is playing with their sister outside in the sky. I guess they sort of could connect both together conceptually.
IMHO, as long as you’re explaining it as a process and it sometimes happens, it shouldn’t be harmful.
Just don’t explain it like Homer Simpson to Bart: “Don’t let Krusty’s death bring you down boy. People die all the time. Just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow. Well, good night”