Emo preschooler is emo.

[rivka]

Alex is talking about death a lot these days.

I posted a few weeks ago about having to explain to her why we can't send a letter to someone who has died. Since then, she's continued to raise the topic several times a week. I'm not sure why.

I think the topic initially came up because she was asking lots of questions about relatives. She likes working out the details of relationships: Grandma is her grandmother, and she's my mother. That led, inevitably, to questions like, "Who is your grandmother, Mama?" And I would answer something like: "I had two grandmothers - Grandma's mother, and Grandpa's mother. Their mothers were my grandmothers. But I don't have any grandmothers anymore because they died."

Once she absorbed the idea that she had a grandmother who died - Michael's mother, who died in 1997 and who we call "Grandma Nancy" when we talk to Alex - she kept returning and returning to the topic. "Grandma Nancy died," she'll inform me at random times. Sometimes she'll add, "Papa was so sad. He cried and cried." (I think that was initially something I told her.) And once: "I'm so sad that Grandma Nancy died, because I want to play with her."

She's constructed a logical story about Michael's family relationships: "Grandma Nancy was Papa's mother, but she died. And then Gran was Papa's new mother." I can see where she got there, and in the chronology of Michael's experience she's not entirely wrong. Gran is Laura, Michael's birthmother; Grandma Nancy was his adoptive mother. We didn't meet Laura until after Michael's mother died. (We haven't tried to explain adoption yet.)

Death talk is not limited to Grandma Nancy. She held up one of her Little Einstein dolls and informed me sadly, "Annie's mother died and her father died. She doesn't have any parents." The other day she said casually, "When my doctor dies, I'll get a new doctor."

Death, death, death.

"A child's mother and father usually don't die," I told her once.

"But Grandma Nancy died." She didn't sound especially distressed, just thoughtful.

"She died when Papa was a grownup. She stayed alive and took care of him the whole time he was a child."

"Oh."

I want to promise her that we won't die, but I haven't. I can't. Fortunately, she hasn't asked. She doesn't seem to worry about that, and she doesn't seem to worry about dying herself. She mostly seems to be trying to figure out death-the-concept: what the heck is up with death?

acceberskoorb - and let me say right here that all children should have an acceberskoorb in their lives - helped us find some books to read to Alex. There are quite a few picture books about death out there, but most of them fall into the category of "books to buy when someone significant in your preschooler's life has just died." Very few people seem to write "indulge your preschooler's philosophical curiosity about death" books. We wound up with two.

We've already gotten the first one from the library: When Dinosaurs Die, a comic book-format guide to basic questions about death. ("What does alive mean? Why does someone die? What does dead mean?") The text is general; the focus in the pictures and speech bubbles shifts back and forth from a dead bird some children find in the park to beloved pets to unconnected people (a soldier, an accident victim) to close relatives. I skip over a lot of the intense details about grieving when I read it to her. She loves it.

During tonight's reading - and OMG I am going straight to Parent Hell for reading a book about death and dying as a bedtime story, but she specifically requested it even after I suggested it was Not Quite The Thing - she came out with a couple of new comments: "Goodbye, Grandma Nancy" (said in a sad voice), and "I want to light a candle for Grandma Nancy." So she's obviously taking in quite a bit from the book, and reorganizing the way she thinks about having a dead relative.

The other book I ordered is called Lifetimes. From the Amazon reviews, it seems to focus on death as a natural process, a shared characteristic of all living things. That seems like it might be even more to the point, if her interest really is mostly philosophical.

It's hard to figure out where the line is between meeting your child's sincerely expressed interest in information about death and encouraging her to be weirdly, precociously morbid. I don't think a preoccupation with death is particularly normal for a three-year-old. And yet, if she's thinking about it and asking about it, obviously we can't cut her off completely. I'm hoping that these books will help settle her mind on the issue, and we can go back to her plans to become a veterinarian by age ten. ("Ten is old," she has informed us.)

Comments

[naomikritzer]

It's a little uncommon for a three-year-old to be preoccupied with death (unprompted by a major loss) but I had a friend (I now can't remember which) who had a kid who was totally obsessed with death for a while as a preschooler. All you can really do is roll with it.

I swear sometimes I wish I could start a publishing house just to do the Helpful Books to Read to your Kids that no one else does. We went hunting for a "Suzie Goes to the Dentist" type book for Molly when she was a toddler in which the child has a cavity that needs filling. We did finally find one: Mercer Mayer's Little Critter has a cavity, gets a shot of novocaine, and has it filled. Every other book on the market has the reassuring message that cavities are something that happen to OTHER people, which is distinctly unhelpful when your 15-month-old had her first trip to the dentist due to visible early decay.

[moobabe.livejournal.com]

I don't remember how old Hannah was when she started her death phase, but she's finally starting to ease back a little. For a while there, her night-time farewell, every single night, was, "I hope you don't die." I think she was slightly older than Alex, but for a while there, every story she told involved ghosts and blood, and I thought, "This can't normal." My mother-in-law, who has run several daycares, did say that it's not as uncommon as you might think.

Go figure.

[trope.livejournal.com]

Yup. I can't remember ever TALKING about death, but I do have early memories of saying good night to my parents and ending with "I love you" so that if they died or I died in the middle of the night, those would be my last words with them. I think I was... five? six? Sorta young.

For me, I think it had something to do with that awful, "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep" poem.

[jenett]

I was quietly death obsessed for a bit (maybe a little older than Alex: mine hit when I realised my parents were substantially older than other people's, and would likely die before other people's, all things being equal. I knew I'd figured that out by the time I was 6, but I think I'd actually mostly put it together without actually telling anyone before that.)

Regrettably, this turned out to be remarkably useful pre-planning, as when my father was diagnosed with (and then died of) cancer when I was 15, I'd already done a lot of "If this happens, which things am I really worried about" pre-worrying in advance. Which was both internally weird in a few places, and I think significantly weirded out a number of adults.

In my case, I think the interest may also have been triggered by my older siblings being much less around (they're 15 and 16 years older, so when I was 3 and 4, they were at a nearby college, but starting to not be around so much or reliably.) I wonder if the recent move stuff (despite it being very short distance) might have gotten then 'never again are we going to do X in that house' wheels working, and then they just jumped to different tracks.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I wish I'd had access to some of those books in 1959.

I think she's just trying to figure relationships and relationship states out. 'Dead relative' is something she's realized as a different relationship state from 'living relative.' Also, thinking back to my own childhood when I learned that my mother's father had died before I was born, I just regretted that I'd never had a chance to know him.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

It's normal. It's not a preoccupation, exactly -- it sounds like geeky interest to me. My munchkins did the same thing (one at about Alex's age, one a couple years older).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound particularly abnormal to me. Death is one of those really weird concepts. And Unitarians don't have any nice, neat, simple kid-friendly explanations to give, like, "Now they're in a magical happy land with ice cream and Jesus and ponies."

(I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to slam on religions that DO have beliefs about the afterlife -- just on the ridiculously oversimplified versions of those beliefs that are often given to three-year-olds. And, heck, I even think that some of those ridiculously oversimplified versions are useful to small children at times.)

It's been my experience that, mostly, when kids that age are talking about death, the main things they want to know is that, if the people they count on DO die, that they will still be taken care of. They're not usually AFRAID of death, particularly. And they're not so worried about parents dying for the "I'll miss my parents" reasons -- more the, "if my parents aren't there, who will take care of me" thing.

For me, when I was a kid, my parents basically went through the list of people that could take care of me, pointing out how ridiculously long that list was, and that, even if every single one of them died, then the government would take care of me.

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

oversimplified versions of those beliefs that are often given to three-year-olds. And, heck, I even think that some of those ridiculously oversimplified versions are useful to small children at times.

One of my family's favorite anecdotes:

My nephew Tommy was about Alex's age when the family dog, Buffy, died. His mom explained to him that Buffy was now in Heaven.

A while (a few weeks? months?) later, in a conversation where my mom was mentioned, Tommy asked about her. (Tommy's mother is my sister; our mom died of cancer when Tommy was about 10 weeks old, so he doesn't actually remember her.) "She's in Heaven," my sister explained. (My sister is a Presbyterian.) "Buffy Heaven?" asked Tommy, who seemed to have conflated the two ideas. "Yes," my sister agreed, "Grandma's in Buffy Heaven."

When she told me and my other sisters about this we had a big giggle about what Mom would think of her afterlife being described as "Buffy Heaven." But it seemed to fit Tommy's need for explanations at that point.

Vet at ten

[hazelchaz]

Nice to see that she's got ambitions. Ten is old, indeed...

Re: Vet at ten

[rivka.livejournal.com]

We feel better about the vet-at-ten plan than we did about her other expressed life plan, which involved having a baby grow in her tummy when she's seven.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I can remember at about that age, or maybe about a year older, when my Auntie Emma died (my grandmother's second-cousin, she was very old indeed) figuring out what it meant in terms of not being able to communicate, and also the thing I still haven't come to terms with, the goneness, the stoppedness of death. The way she had been there and real and you could talk to her, and now she wasn't any more. I remember thinking that when I grew up I'd figure out some way to get messages back from dead people, and not only would this be useful and comforting, but it would make me famous.

I think this was a necessary part of figuring out the world, and I expect it's much the same for Alex.

(Sparing you more on this subject.)

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Wait until she finds out vets have to help animals die sometimes.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

There is an incredible episode of Harold and the Purple Crayon where his goldfish dies and he visits a mermaid under the ocean looking for his goldfish and she exquisitely gently explains to him that his goldfish is not coming back and that it is not his fault for being mad that his goldfish can't play fetch like a dog. It's really great. It's called I remember Goldie and it's available on dvd - there might be an accompanying book too, not sure.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Did this all start up after the miscarriage? Because it's maybe her way of understanding what happened there, and your and Michael's grief after initial happiness.

Anyway, that's my observation - worth something or nothing depending on how much you think is accurate :)

N.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I thought about that too - I don't know. When we told her about the miscarriage, we never talked about it as a death. We said that we thought I had a baby growing inside me, but I didn't - I was just sick. And that we were sad because we wished there was a baby growing in me. But she might have overheard something that made her think differently, or she may have drawn her own conclusions.

(One heart-wrenching conclusion she drew was that, when I stopped being sick, there would be a baby growing in me. I wish.)

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

My oldest daughter went through a death-obsessed phase at about this age. She wanted to go to cemeteries to see dead people, and was disappointed that she couldn't see them there. It was very interesting, to observe her working out what this "death" thing meant.

[ailbhe]

Linnea has moments of death-wondering and I wish I was dealing with them as well as you do. I think she picks up on my discomfort and stops asking, frankly.

Nature "documentaries" are no longer a good idea for us either; she used to love the "Walking With Dinosaurs" episode about the diplodocus but now focusses heavily on the first tiny little sauropodlet who gets viciously eaten alive on hatching. I tried to refocus her - "Look at them waddling into the forest!"

"No they're not," she almost sobbed, "They're running AWAY."

We often walk through a graveyard in town, and she's kind of interested in it sometimes, and sometimes not. The cats catch things.

We've basically said that we don't know what dead is, but when someone is dead, they're not there any more, anywhere that we can see or speak to them.

Next up: Meat eating.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I gotta say, this is fascinating to think about.

While her subject is unusual, though, her interest/fascination sounds healthy and normal... and it's not like it's about fire engines, where people *talk* about fire engines and have lots of books about them.

[ailbhe]

I'm not convinced the subject is unusual - I know my children can tell when I don't want to help them explore a topic and it can be hard to overcome that, since they don't want to be helped by someone unenthusiastic; I think adults' problems with death causes children's lack of interest at least as much as absence of actual interest does.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe it's not unusual, I'll grant you that... I just haven't heard anyone else mention it. Then again, I don't hang out with many young children, or parents, so I wouldn't know.

[erbie.livejournal.com]

IME, a preoccupation with death is TOTALLY normal in a three year old. It sounds like she's processing it and figuring out where it fits in with her other knowledge.

When my oldest was about three, she went through a phase of preoccupation with death as well. Apparently, my explanations leave something to be desired, because at one point I heard her tell her friend that when you die, you get put in a box and then the box flies around in the sky. Oops.

[charlottezweb.livejournal.com]

Royce hasn't asked so much about death per se, but he has things die a lot. He'll be playing and then tell us that his stuffed animal is dead or be play fighting with his dad and say "You dead, Daddy." I think he's trying to work out what that means.

I think it's more normal than one might think--people just don't write/publish as many book on death for kids because it's 'morbid'.