Ahmet was 6 years old. He could not understand that his mother and father had left him at a close friend's house. In the evening, they left him saying “We will pick you up” and did not say anything else. However, when they went to work, their parents would leave Ahmet with his grandmother, but this time it was not like this.
When her family came to pick her up that evening, they looked very sad and exhausted. Ahmet, who was very happy to see them, nevertheless knew that something was wrong.
Mom, what happened? Did you cry? And why didn't you leave me to my grandma?
His mother did not know how to tell her son about his grandmother's death because she had never mentioned the concept of death to her son until now. He gathered himself a little and formed the following sentences.
–How long has your grandmother been ill? As he was old, he could not stand it anymore and left us. He is in heaven now. He had his parents and now he is with them. We will never see him again, but he will watch us from afar. He can see us, but we cannot see him. But when you miss him so much, he said, it can come to your dreams.
Ahmet was surprised and even scared. Her mother was saying that she would never see her grandmother again, her lips trembled and she wanted to cry. When he looked at his father and saw that his father was standing strong, he wanted to hold back his tears. Well, if a tear fell from his eye, his father would get angry at him and say, 'Do men cry?' He had a lot of questions he wanted to ask his mother. But she couldn't ask, she was upset. He looked around, could his grandmother be with him? After all, she was no longer visible.
He knew that the crowd waiting for them when they got home was for his grandmother. Too many people were crying and looked sad. - Heaven is a beautiful place, my mother told me. If my grandmother went to a beautiful place, why are these people crying? she thought.
When it was time to sleep, she went to bed. But he couldn't sleep. Knowing that someone was watching him, even if it was someone he loved, frightened Ahmet. He had spent the night in fear and sadness, pulling the quilt over his head.
Ahmet didn't want to sleep alone anymore.
How does a child think?
Children's emotional development accompanies all their other developments and prepares them for adulthood. A child needs to build a strong foundation to manage their personal emotions and build positive relationships. Of course, there should be the concept of death in this.
Ahmet lost his grandmother suddenly and was very sad to learn that he would never see her again. The child is closer to the feeling of abandonment rather than experiencing a loss here. When his mother said, “You will not see your grandmother again, she is gone”, the child said: “How so? Did my grandma leave me? Will he not come to see me anymore?" and his mother's words watching us from afar caused the child to think, "Is my grandmother a ghost now?".
More Ahmet, who has never heard of the concept of death from his family before, has definitely heard about death on television or in games. Therefore, he never identified this phenomenon with himself and did not think that it would happen to him. He has already given the impression from the experiences around him that it is something simple.
How?
Children get hit by a car with a cat or a dog. When he dies, he may say, "Mother, look, the cat is dead," as if it were a natural process, or he may be aware that the animal's life is over when he accidentally crushes a snail, sometimes even on purpose. Sometimes, in the games he plays (war, fighting, etc.), he may say "I was shot, they killed me". Or he might hear it on the news on TV. Even if they have not heard from their parents, ignoring something that has completed its formation in life is a situation that harms your children's emotional development. What you need to do is to prepare them for this process and to explain it in the most accurate way.
The sooner children are told about death, the more they will survive and accept this process in a healthy way. After all, death is as much a part of life as birth.
What can you do?
• Children usually They have limited knowledge about death up to the olfactory process. They know that they will never see the person or people they lost in this age range, but they also think that this situation will change. In other words, they believe that death is a temporary thing and that it can be changed with sentences or behaviors such as "I miss it, come on now". At such moments, it is extremely important to show the most correct and real approach. No matter how old you are, when the child calls out to the lost person or says "I miss him", your unrealistic sentences such as "He hears you, now he has a job, another day will come", "He knows that you miss him, evening will come" will cause more pain to his world. and it causes him to lose hope. Because this will not happen. Instead, she said, "I know it's so sad that you won't be able to see someone you love again, but when we miss them we can look at their pictures or draw a picture of them and say what we couldn't say to them but they can't hear us. We do this so that we feel better.” With this approach, you both make him trust you, prevent him from telling the truth and expect it, and teach him how to deal with this situation by offering solutions.
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• The examples I mentioned above are valid for children who have never been told about death until this age. The most effective and easiest way to tell a child about someone he has lost is to exemplify it through another being. Ask the child, “Do you know how butterflies are formed? They are born as caterpillars first, and when you see a caterpillar, it does not occur to you that a butterfly will emerge from that caterpillar. But when the time comes, the caterpillar will no longer be a butterfly. ready for the month. It gradually gets rid of its caterpillar state and turns into a butterfly preparing to fly. But butterflies cannot live very long in the world. They have time to leave the world. That's how they were born. That's how it is with people. We are born babies first, then we grow up and age. Your grandmother was old and it was time to leave the world. It's a pity we won't be able to see him again, but there are so many pictures of him that we can even draw a picture for him to say goodbye. But we will never see or hear him again. You can say ' You can adapt and explain these sentences in sudden deaths. Children can ask many questions. Where did it go? Why did he go? When you are faced with questions such as (you don't know the answers to these questions anyway) to the child, "I don't know, people even call it death when they leave the world, I don't know where they are going. ' you can say. If you want to talk about heaven, if your child feels very sad or very bad, he thinks that death is a sweet thing and says, "However, my mother said that when we die, we will go to heaven. I'm not happy, I'll die then" and end his life. You may have unwittingly laid the groundwork for such an end. Of course, this is not a thought that is valid for every child, but none of us can know which child will think this way and which will not. So don't risk it and stick to the facts. Children are strong, they can overcome anything with the right support of their parents.
• If you carry out all these statements in a healthy way and your child's If you think you are cognitively and emotionally ready, you can also talk about the territoriality of people's bodies after they die. You can even let him visit. When a bird, a butterfly, or a plant dies before, “He is no longer alive. It belongs to the earth. We can't leave your body here. Let's bury him together. With experiences like '' you teach the child that bodies are left to the ground after death. However, if you have a child who does not know what death is and you have never explained it with concrete examples, and who is too timid and sensitive to cope with it. At this point, you can apply for expert support.
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