The other day my three-year-old directly inquired: “Mummy, will you die?” I didn’t think kids were supposed to grapple with things like this until they were much older, so the question caught me a bit off guard. I always tell my boy the truth (except when it comes to Santa and the Easter Bunny), so I replied: “Yes darling but not for a long, long time and I’ll be really old and you’ll be a big grown-up man. Everyone dies eventually.” He burst into tears. Good one Mum! Perhaps I should have lied and said we would both live forever. But on some level that didn’t sit right with me. Even my truth, is not really the truth. I could be a hit by a bus tomorrow, get some horrible disease – obviously I just don’t know. The thought that I will die at a ripe old age when he is a healthy, productive man is my fantasy, not fact. Experts say that children are aware of death from a very early age. They see dead animals on the side of the road, or they see it on television. Young children often think death is reversible. But between the ages of about five and nine they start to realise it is permanent but it will usually be viewed as some impersonal concept – something that happens to other people. My son’s direct question leapt over all these stages and landed straight at the heart of the matter: death is forever and it happens to all of us. Even if you are religious and believe the soul lives on, it’s the physicality of the matter that will have most impact on children: here one day, gone the next. Many parents use the idea of heaven to cushion the impact of death. The person or pet who has died has gone to be with the angels (or whatever). But I’m afraid my heart isn’t in this explanation. So on the one hand while it seems a bit brutal to tell the truth, I console myself that death is not a taboo subject in our family so that should help my son come to grips with it later. Sadly two of my child’s grandparents have passed away – one before he was born and one when he was only six months old. We often discuss them and my son is aware that they are no longer with us. But dealing with the death of a living friend of relative who is a part of your daily life has to be very different experience for little people. I still remember the day of my grandmother’s death when I was nine. I remember the weight of it on my mother, an only child. My recollection is that my Dad pretty much told me like it was – she died of a heart attack while sitting in the lounge chair. I didn’t attend the funeral. I remember my pet birds dying in their cage in the backyard. (Perhaps that was the problem – that their cage was in the backyard!!) When Hope, Faith and Charity died, we let Love go (seriously – that was their names!! Maybe they died of shame?) I never experienced the loss of a close lovable dog or cat until I was in my twenties. During my childhood my Dad would do his block with our pets, and ship them off, long before they reached old age. I often thank my lucky stars how limited my experience of death has been. But that’s often not the case for many families, on many different levels. I would be interested in how others have handled the issue with their children, especially if you’ve actually had to deal with the death of a loved one. Do pets really help children cope with death or is that a conspiracy put about by Pets’ Paradise? Do you think kids should see a dying relative or go to funerals? Should we take our cue from our children themselves? (That is, let them do what they are comfortable doing.) One thing is inescapable – we can’t protect them from death forever.