Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello. Welcome back. We have Dr. Emily Upshur. We have Dr. Rebecca Hershberg, and these lovely psychologists and moms are here to answer our own listener questions. So first of all, hi. Good to see you guys.

Dr. Emily (00:59):

Hi.

Dr. Rebecca (01:00):

Hi. Great to see you.

Dr. Sarah (01:01):

So I have a question for you guys. Are you ready to hear it?

Dr. Rebecca (01:04):

Absolutely.

Dr. Emily (01:07):

Yep.

Dr. Sarah (01:07):

Okay. So this parent writes in, I have a question about something that started coming up a lot when my daughter was around three or four and still pops up now that she’s six questions about death and dying for a while. It felt like she was asking about it constantly. What happens when we die? Are you going to die? Am I going to die? Et cetera. And honestly, it really freaked me out, especially because we hadn’t had any significant losses in the family. So I didn’t know why she was always thinking about this. I tried to answer calmly, but I know my discomfort probably came through at times and maybe made it feel more scary or confusing for her. I’m wondering how normal is it for little kids to ask about death and how should we respond to these kinds of questions? Thanks so much.

Dr. Rebecca (01:53):

Great question. I mean, I think the first part is quite straightforward, which is it’s very normal. Even when, no, I appreciated that she said there was nothing that happened because certainly those questions come up in the wake of a pet dying or a grandparent, or God forbid anybody in one circle. But even without that, they’re aware of the circle of life. They’re aware that the animals die, and so they have a lot of questions. So yes, very, very, very normal. That’s kind of part A.

Dr. Sarah (02:36):

Yeah. And I think part B, if I’m reading your mind correctly, is that there’s a piece to hear about how do we as parents manage our own anxiety around death and dying and how do we communicate to kids that their questions make sense? We might not have all the answers, but also that we have to kind of regulate our own stuff because pretty likely this parent, just like I think most people who are adults right now may not have had a lot of people talking to them about it when they were kids. We as a culture, struggle to tolerate talking about grief and loss and our mortality. It’s tough.

Dr. Rebecca (03:16):

Yeah, I think there’s a way in which it’s the human condition and you have to learn in order to get through the day. You have to compartmentalize. Nobody could do anything if they actually were conscious each moment that it could be their last. And so yes, our culture in particular has gone perhaps too far in the compartmentalization. And there’s other cultures that do a better job of celebrating death as just part of, as I said, a cycle. But I think as parents, we do a lot of subconscious or fully unconscious work to push those thoughts away and we don’t really want to think about it or talk about it. And then our kids bring it to the surface. And I remember actually when my kids started, my older son started asking those questions. My own therapist at the time said, well, before we get to how to talk about it with him, what are your thoughts about death and dying?

(04:15):

And I was just like, I’m terrified. I don’t want to think about it. I have zero interest in talking about it, thinking about it. And she was like, okay, well, I’m not surprised this is triggering for you. And so I do think there’s a way in which before even getting to how do we respond to kids, just taking some time either independently or with a partner or a therapist or whatever, to just think about the messages you got about death and dying and where you stand on it and what you believe it’s all about and what happens next and all those things. Because a lot of us have never taken the time to do that. And that does end up becoming important in these conversations.

Dr. Sarah (04:57):

Yeah, I think too because our own feelings about death and dying and also processing any grief that might be attached to that or trauma or anxiety, but even bigger, more meta, broad strokes is I think one of the reasons why that stuff is particularly triggering all those specifics aside like grief and loss and trauma, is that uncertainty is also very difficult for us to tolerate as a human species. And there’s nothing more uncertain when our kids say, what happens?

Dr. Rebecca (05:35):

Well, there’s nothing more uncertain about when you’re going to die. There’s a whole lot of certainty around the fact that every single person is going to die. And that’s pretty tough to face also.

Dr. Sarah (05:45):

Yes, that’s true. I’m talking more about the uncertainty and when our kids say, what happens when we die? When am I going to die? When are you going to die? And we have to sit there and tolerate the discomfort in the unknowing and then try to communicate that to our child. And I think as parents, we often like to protect our children from the anxiety of uncertainty. We give them, we’re taught, give them lots of preparation, help them anticipate, let them know it’s coming. They don’t do well with not knowing. And this is the opposite. It’s almost like, no, the answer is we don’t really know. And that’s hard. We have some thoughts, we have some ideas, but we don’t really know.

Dr. Emily (06:34):

I was just going to say, I’m listening to you guys talk and I’m like, oh my God, that’s not at all. I lost a parent at age eight, so my whole life is about having had a loss and death. So I mean, I don’t remember a time not having known about death. And so my experience around it is just so integrated into my life. So when my kids have brought it up or when things have, and I’ve always talked about it because actually both myself and my husbands have parents that have died. And so it’s sort of been a narrative for them too, because they only have one grandparent that sort of has always been a part of our, there’s no anxiety about talking about that. I guess I should say there’s none, but it’s just so much more normalized in our family culture because there has always been loss. And so it’s interesting. I totally, I think that the more normative experience, or maybe one experience of a lot of people is to feel a lot of anxiety about talking about it or integrating it or avoiding it with kids. But it’s interesting. I think for us it’s just always been part of the narrative in our family.

Dr. Sarah (07:47):

But it’s interesting too because obviously it sounds like not only did the loss that you and your husband both experienced growing up in some ways maybe desensitized you a little bit to enormity of the black box of the topic. We know this, it is here, it’s in our lives, so we are not as sensitive to, it’s not taboo. But I could imagine that you, I hope I know you well enough to know you probably have done a lot of work on processing your grief around that. And so that for families who, depending on how much their own grief has been processed, talking about it with their kids, could also imagine have ways of triggering things that are unprocessed or even things that are processed that could be hard.

Dr. Emily (08:44):

Yeah, I think that, yes, I think people probably bring their own stuff, like you were saying, your trauma or your experience with it in it. But I think a very common experience avoid this person is saying, I am sort of avoiding this topic. I dunno, oof, I feel really uncomfortable. And I think that that can be the case and it can also not be the case. It can be the case that it’s not avoided. And maybe that brings other stuff into the mix too. But I think the thing we’re all saying is everybody, every parent brings their own experience or every person brings their own experience, which includes their profile of losses and grief and healing or not healing or where they ever, they are in that grief process to these conversations with their kids.

Dr. Rebecca (09:34):

And I think their own profile also of meaning making. And I know certainly when I speak with clients about this, which is quite frequent, one of the factors that really matters is a religion or a belief system. I think there are people who feel like they actually do know what happens. They wouldn’t necessarily testify to it in court. I mean again, but their faith is strong and it’s like we will all be in heaven together. That’s not my belief system. So even what you said, Sarah, about the uncertainty, I think that really varies from family to family also. And there are whole cultures and communities that take comfort. It’s like, oh, this person died. Well, they’re with God now. And that’s a good thing. And so I think Emily, I would just piggyback on what you said and just say even it’s so complicated. And so I think some of where this parent, the listener is coming from is clear in the way that they phrase the question. But I think certainly with my own kids, it’s not just, I don’t know, it’s more different. People believe different things. There’s this tradition, there’s that tradition. I believe we carry people around in our hearts, but I make it very clear that that’s not literal.

Dr. Emily (11:18):

That’s a really important piece. Becca. I always say, I think it is really important to talk to every developmental age being different, but really to talk about that you’re not going to see them every day, what the literal…

Dr. Rebecca (11:31):

Right, the permanence of it and that the body stop. The other thing I think is because our culture doesn’t necessarily embrace death the way others do. There’s so many euphemisms for it. They wrote off peacefully to the great divide that doesn’t actually mean anything to a 3-year-old. They went to the next part of their journey or they even met with, they passed on, they met with God, they fell asleep forever. That’s terrifying. To a kid, fall asleep forever, I’m never going to sleep again because what if I don’t wake up? So I think being really clear, even though it may be uncomfortable as an adult, depending on how you grew up saying they died, when you die, your body stops working, your heart stops beating your lungs, stop taking in air. Kids love when you say you don’t fart, you don’t poop. Bring a little lightness to, but it’s really like the body no longer works and you don’t see, as you said Emily, you don’t see that person again. That person’s not at Thanksgiving anymore, that person’s, and that can be really hard to say because again, a lot of us, I don’t want to again speak for everyone, don’t like to say that. It’s like, oh gosh, that just sounds like really intense. But kids need that level of literalness.

Dr. Sarah (12:51):

Concreteness.

Dr. Rebecca (12:52):

And concreteness. Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (12:54):

I think this is why it’s so important when we started this conversation to emphasize how okay, every human adult’s going to bring their own story to this and their own level of how much they’ve processed or don’t have yet to process certain things that are activating around this topic. And we’re also going to bring our own unique belief system culture, history of loss to the story as well. So we need to separate out the parent who’s being asked this question and all the things they bring to the moment in which the question is being asked. But then I do think it is very important to then separate that out even now in this conversation, but even in the moment of the question being asked to you as a parent to say, okay, I’m bringing a lot to this and what is developmentally what my child can tolerate and what do they need and how can I explain this in a way that they’re going to understand and it’s going to mean something containing for them.

(13:54):

We don’t need to assume that they’re going to have the same fears and triggers and anxieties that we might be bringing. I think we can be more explicit about the things, but also they’re not going to be able to understand the abstractness of it. So to your point, Rebecca, it is developmentally appropriate to explain to a three, four, even 6-year-old, extremely, literally what happens. I mean, I don’t think you need to go into more detail than necessary, but I do think your point is important to underline because it also can go against what we might feel like would be easiest for us and even maybe for our kid in that moment to make it feel a lot softer.

Dr. Emily (14:41):

I think that’s exactly right. But I think taking it just a step further, I always encourage families to just like you just said, Rebecca, it’s very uncomfortable, but not only to developmentally appropriate, but customize it to your child. Is this a child who’s seen somebody only at Thanksgiving? So then you’ll say, you won’t say that, see them at Thanksgiving, but is this a caretaker who has been, is this a grandparent who has been your caretaker for example? Or you want to really customize. They won’t be coming every day after school anymore. You won’t be seeing them. I think it’s really important to speak to what makes sense to the child to help them understand.

Dr. Rebecca (15:22):

And young kids will ask again and again and again, we’re getting a little bit away from this specific question. This listener said specifically, there was nothing like this that happened, but I’ve had families be really concerned that they’ve explained to their child that let’s say they’re not going to see this person at after school every day or whatever it is, and they’re child will say, why weren’t they there? And then the next day, why weren’t they there? Wait, I expect, again, kids, young kids have a really hard time with the idea of permanence, but I think these questions about what happens, I mean, it’s a mind bender for adults. It’s, and I remember watching my son’s faces, he was like, but wait, if you die but you don’t know that you are dead, then what do you know? Where are you? Who’s you? And I was like, I get what I said, which someone had suggested and it ended up being really helpful, is just normalizing and making universal in that moment.

(16:35):

Do you feel the way your head is kind of exploding a little bit right now that’s called being human. There are so many kids at this exact moment in time who are having similar thoughts and who have similar questions and some of the greatest philosophers of all time, their minds have gone into knots the same way yours just did. It’s almost like a passage, a rite of passage. And so rather than try to answer, there is no answer. That’s kind of the point to just say all those questions because one of the hardest part about having those questions I think for kids, and we’ve talked about this in other contexts, is the idea that they might be alone in that. Like, oh my God, I’m so terrified by these thoughts because they’re so unique to me. And what if my mom hasn’t thought about this? Or what if my And it’s to say they feel so new and unfamiliar and I promise I had them when I was seven and people just on our block might be having them right now and talking to their moms. And that I remember calming my son down because it was like, oh, okay.

Dr. Sarah (17:50):

We all wonder about it.

Dr. Rebecca (17:51):

This emotional experience isn’t just mine to carry alone. And it took the pressure off. I didn’t have to answer and say, because again, I guess someone might be able to answer who has a different belief system, but that person’s not me.

Dr. Emily (18:05):

I think that brings up a really important thing that I think came up with for this listener, which is though, I mean children are very, very egocentric and it’s very natural to think what will happen to me if my parent dies? And I think this is a classic parent avoidance who when we haven’t done estate planning and we haven’t made our will and we’re like, oh crap, I’m an adult and I got to make my will, stuff like that. But I do think that that can be thinking through, okay, well this is the plan depending on the age appropriateness, if I passed away, you’d be living with daddy and if daddy passed away, you’d be living with auntie. I do think being very calm and reassuring and saying, and that you can be really sad and we can talk about, but I do think having a real plan is both reassuring for you as a parent, but also that your child can sort of know that you’ve thought about, you’ve got them right, you’ve got them, you have a plan. They’re going to make sure they’re always safe and secure and with someone who loves them. That’s also a really important piece of this, I think.

Dr. Sarah (19:17):

Yeah, it’s so interesting. Obviously you’re coming from this from the child who actually did lose the parent, so I could see you having insights into what made you feel safe in the wake of that shakeup and the biggest shakeup. And I’m also wondering, I think one of my questions as you were describing that intervention was like, does it help to keep it more open and let them, are we trying to communicate the essence of you are going to be taken care of, there is a plan for all the possible scenarios that grownups have already figured out so that you’re going to be safe no matter what, speak to the fear more? Or is it like we have a plan? Let me tell you exactly what the plan is or what if the plan ends up changing?

Dr. Rebecca (20:19):

I think it depends on the kids.

Dr. Emily (20:21):

Yeah, I was going to say, I think it’s the same approach I have with anything else, which is child led. I wouldn’t answer questions they’re not asking. I would let them lead the questions, but I think some kids in this listener, I heard, what’s going to happen to you? What’s going to happen to me if something happens to you? So I think you’re right. I think you speak to the, depending on the A, if it’s your 16 year, you might say, here’s the plan, right? Here’s the actual plan or that child. To your point, Rebecca might be like, okay, great, fine, I’ll be safe. What’s the plan? But what’s going to happen? It really depends. I think you have such little kids, so it’s sort of hard to imagine. But I think older children ask these questions too. This is a 6-year-old for this listener, and so I think you say you’ll be safe, you’ll be okay. And that’s age appropriate. And if they ask, I think it is important as a parent, a lot of parents are avoiding this. A lot of parents haven’t thought about this, their plans, their wills, because it’s scary and it’s icky and it’s yucky. But I think you have to customize it to the child. And I would always not answer questions that you don’t need to, but follow their lead and try to be developmentally attuned to that.

Dr. Sarah (21:40):

Yeah, no, that’s helpful. I think too, I could see a very anxious child because just like we were saying how kids are egocentric, they sometimes they’re looking at this through their lens, well, what’s going to happen to me? But also kids are egocentric in the same way that if you’re like, okay, their heart stopped working, their lungs stopped working, they’re not going to be here anymore. And then they’re like, can my heart stop working? Will I be here tomorrow? I think there’s that, and not even, not an particularly anxious kid. Any kid I think could go there. But I think for particularly anxious kids who are more vulnerable to becoming anxious or getting stuck on things like that, I think yes, we want to give them information. It goes back to the same thing about is it an information gathering question or is it a reassurance seeking question? Is sometimes they’re asking this questions, they really don’t know the answers, and this is the very first time they’re actually thinking about this and getting this information from you and you’re sharing it and you’re trying to be concrete, age appropriate, as detailed as is being asked by the child. But then if the kid keeps repeatingly returning to the same questions, wanting the same answers, I think it’s a sign that there’s something else driving that. And I think it could also inform our responses a bit.

Dr. Emily (23:06):

I mean, I think what I hear you saying is you don’t want to scare a child if you don’t need to, or you don’t want to create anxiety where there isn’t any to begin, there isn’t substantial enough to begin with. Is that sort of?

Dr. Sarah (23:19):

No, because actually I think parents assume kids will be a lot more anxious about this than they are. I actually think parents can sit back and say, I can actually talk about this with my kid. I might feel anxious, but my kid is actually probably going to be okay. And really surprisingly welcoming and intolerant of disinformation, it’s more like sometimes we’ll hit up against a moment, and I think it’s useful to track these a little bit for our kids where let’s say they asked me a question, are you die? What’s going to happen to me if you die? And then you say, I don’t really know. I try my best to take care of myself, but these aren’t things that we can always control. And yes, there is a plan and you will be taken care of no matter what. And we could go through all the things.

(24:01):

It’s okay to be sad. Hopefully this won’t happen for a long time, but one day it will, and I know that you’ll be able to handle that even if it’s very sad. And then the child starts to say, okay, but are you going to die tomorrow? And then every start for days is going to go back and be like, so wait, are you going to die tomorrow? Are you going to die tomorrow? I see this kinds of things too, where kids get stuck on a question, we’ve answered it, and now it keeps coming back. And it’s not so much that we have to keep explaining it to them. I think that’s where we go to the place of like, oh, that’s a worry. You’re feeling that worry again. And then we talk more about that tolerance of the uncertainty or of the worry or the sad or scared feeling. Does that make sense?

Dr. Rebecca (24:51):

It does. I also think it’s okay in this case. Again, I think and your mileage may vary to provide some reassurance so long as it’s not lying. So you’re not going to say, I’m never going to die, or I know exactly what I’m going to die. And it’s not till I’m 95, but I think it’s okay to say I’m in really good health, and if this is true, obviously I’m in really good health. I go to the doctor. There’s no reason to think that I’m going to die anytime sooner.

(25:30):

I think it’s okay to say that to a kid and just calm them down a little bit in a way that’s different from, and again, if you have a really anxious kid and you’re doing space, then this is their thing. It’s a whole different thing. But I think it’s okay for most kids to tell them, I believe I’m going to be okay for a while. And with them to say something like, most people die when they are old. Are there exceptions? Sure. But I try not to think about those. I think I will die when I’m old. I think you’ll die when you’re old. We’ll be ready when the time comes. Now, I’m very conscious when I’m talking to clients about this. You’re never lying, right? You’re never saying, and I know that’s going to happen, but I think it’s okay to use pretty comforting language to help them tolerate this really big, and sometimes though not always new reality.

Dr. Emily (26:33):

Yeah, I was going to say, Rebecca, as you were saying that obviously as a child with a parent who died, it’s a little bit different context, but I remember my mom would always be like, I don’t have any plans to die soon. There’s no plan. Right? It’s another way of giving it a little bit of levity and also being like, I have no reason to believe that’s going to happen.

(26:55):

And so that’s not the plan, and we’re going to go with that for now. And I agree, I I do think a little reassurance if it’s realistic without lying is really critical and important because there is no need to worry. And I think the other thing I was going to say, and this is maybe hopefully not going too far off on a tangent, but I have a lot of clients say to me, is my kid heartless? I told them so-and-so died. And they were like, great. Can I have a peanut butter sandwich? I think there’s that other piece where it’s like, it cannot. I have parents being like, can they take this in? Why are they being so cold about this? And I think that’s also a normative response. They’re not ready to handle that. They’re not ready to take that in or it, it’s too abstract. It doesn’t have meaning. So I don’t want parents to worry on the opposite of this listener if their kid is not that preoccupied or interested in this.

Dr. Sarah (27:49):

Yeah, no, I think this listener very specifically said there isn’t a particular moment of loss that this kid is responding to specifically. Although as a parent, you don’t know either. Maybe someone at school was talking about it or there could be other things that introduce this concept that was the point of impact for this kid as to why they started to get more kind of curious and stuck on this idea. But I do think there’s sort of different contexts to take into consideration, and the context might inform how you respond. So if this is just a kid waking up to the idea and is very curious and is repeatedly kind of revisiting this theme that’s super developmentally typical, appropriate, normal, and it’s a lot of just kind of trying to help them navigate that in ways that are going to make sense to them, but not necessarily shying away from really going to the reality of what death means.

(28:57):

And in doing so, they might then have worries that you can reassure them about because again, appropriately like we were just talking about, and then there’s other scenarios where there’s a very specific thing they are responding to, in which case we’re going to tailor our responses to meet that kind of context. But I’m hoping that this episode one models how much we all grapple with this and don’t have any one right answer, and that that’s totally okay and normal, but also that there’s a couple different ways to approach it. A lot of these different scenarios, and here’s kind of a starting point, and take some of these ideas, fit them onto size, customize them for your unique situation, your child’s age, your comfort levels, and hopefully you found something in this episode that will give you a piece to take with you. But thank you guys so much. I loved this. This was an interesting one without always a resolution and I like that.

Dr. Rebecca (29:58):

Absolutely. Thank you.

Dr. Emily (29:59):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (30:01):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.