The truth is that we all die one day. Children may find it difficult to accept this truth and some changes in their behavior may occur. For example, worrying about crying, eating less, sleeping less, crying in sleep, crying, urinating on the bed etc.
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Birth and death are complementary to each other. One who is born carries death with him throughout his life. Human life is practicing death from moment to moment since conception. That embryo goes through countless stages as it grows in the struggle for life and death. In the end, death is achieved. Thus any living being travels with death from the beginning of life to the end.
While passing through the human life cycle, it goes through ups and downs from pregnancy to infancy, infancy, pre-infancy, post-infancy, youth, adulthood and death. But does death wait until everyone is old? Of course, it cannot wait, so even children cannot stay away from such eternal truth. They too are watching death from near or far in their lives.
The only difference is how children are explained and understood? Children should also be prepared to accept death as it is a fact that anyone can face death at any time. Why such polar truth? how? Since when to teach? Parents are not clear whether to teach or not.
There are negative practices in our society that teach children about death. For example, death is like sleep. To sleep without waking up is death. Only the very good die. After death one reaches a very pleasant place like heaven. Children should not be allowed to participate in post-mortem rituals.
In reviewing research and theories in this regard, Jean Piaget, a pioneer of cognitive development, found that children under 2 years old do not understand death. But they have suggested that they can find reasons to predict death for 2 years. Therefore, it is not appropriate to inform children under the age of 2 about the death. But children from 2 and up need to be taught because they tend to ask more questions and explore and seek to understand. One of the few ways of teaching can be the story medium.
Story has been developed along with the history of human development. Story preserves the history of human civilization, preserves important facts and guides society. In the intellectual tradition, the major achievements of research on death are also found to be disseminated to the public through stories. For example, the story of Mahabharata can be taken. The
in which the story of Shikhandi, the daughter of Kashi king Ambalika in the first birth, causes the death of Bhishma in the second birth, helps to accept death in a simple way that death is a journey of the body. Children also develop intellectual and emotional skills such as listening to the story with great attention, meditating, generalizing the events of the story to their own lives, and comparing the characters with themselves. When choosing a
story, you should choose events where a character in the story dies. In which a positive ending should be told, showing that someone died but the life of the family resumed in a different way after the death.
After the story is told, the story should be discussed. By narrating the true incident, it should also be clearly stated that if something happens, a person will die. For example, death occurs due to lack of treatment, disease, old age or body aging, internal organs not functioning. In the same way, the fact that body parts are damaged due to accidents and cannot work and death should be explained in a simple way.
Talking about death in this way can cause great anxiety for children and they may ask many questions about death. Like - why do people die?, do they never come back after death?, parents also die?, and I also die? You can ask countless questions like:
All these questions must be answered correctly. The truth is that we all die one day. Children may find it difficult to accept this truth and some changes in their behavior may occur. For example, there may be worry about crying, eating less, sleeping less, crying in sleep, crying, urinating in bed etc.
After this, problems such as fussing, eating less, sleeping less, crying in sleep may also appear. But such activities are gradually managed by 3/4 days. If such behaviors continue to increase instead of decreasing even after 4/5 days, a doctor or psychosocial consultant should be contacted.
In this sequence, you should talk to the children about the dead person, praise the good work done by him, let him draw a picture or write something if he can write. At the house of the deceased person, one should participate in the prayers, pujas, and mourning meetings for the deceased according to the culture. – Ghimire is an early childhood development expert.
