It was the first day of term, and my second year of teaching. A 15-year-old student from my GCSE class came to tell me that he’d failed to complete his project over the holidays.
As he was usually conscientious, I just reminded him that exams were looming and then asked if he’d had a nice break.
‘No, not really – my mum died,’ came his reply.
She’d passed away from an undiagnosed heart problem, and his father was so consumed by grief that he hadn’t thought to notify the school. This boy had been to hell and back, but he might as well have been invisible. As teachers, we’re taught one cardinal rule: never touch the children. But I hugged him – because what else could I have done?
No child should have to deal with such a tragedy, but, sadly, so many do. And in the current coronavirus crisis, this reality just cannot be ignored.
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By the time all of this is over, hundreds of thousands of people in the UK will have lost someone. Tragically, many of my former students are already grieving, as their friends and relatives, unacceptably young and fatefully old, have been taken by the pandemic.
Pretending that death hasn’t happened, or won’t happen, is short-sighted at best, and harmful at worst.
Telling children that their hamster is ‘just sleeping’, or that grandad has gone to ‘live on a cloud’ does not make young people resilient or empowered. It might feel kinder, but that’s more to protect our feelings than theirs.
By the time they reach the age of 16, one in 20 children in the UK will have lost one or both parents. I myself have taught children as young as 11 who’ve had to grieve over parents, grandparents, siblings, or best friends.
As teachers, we have no map for these choppy waters, other than observing the children themselves.
During my training year, one of the pupils died suddenly in a terrible accident at home. In the days that followed, teachers took the pupils’ lead: if they seemed to crave structure and normality, staff switched on the whiteboard and handed out copies of Shakespeare.
If you’re afraid of traumatising your children, take baby steps in the way you talk about it
If they were reeling and raw, they were allowed to sit in clusters on tables, holding each other, crying, laughing at memories and asking their teachers impossibly existential questions.
It was hard to witness children become suddenly alert to their own mortality. In an ideal world, we could shelter them entirely from the pain of grief. But in reality, all we can do – what we should do – is to prepare them for it.
It’s the reason why I sometimes walk with my own six-year-old through the local cemetery. It sounds gloomy, but it gives us a chance to talk about death openly and without fear. Death is a fact of life, so we look it in the face and acknowledge it with fitting respect.
We read the headstones and wonder about the stories of their owners. I point out fresh flowers and upturned whisky bottles, tender signs that friends and family are still thinking about their loved ones.
And she tells me that when I’m dead (when I’m 100, we hope), she’ll still ‘talk to’ me, telling me all about the future world.
We should be discussing death regularly with our kids, from appreciating the change in seasons by explaining how dead leaves feed the ground to talking honestly about where meat comes from. I know so many parents who haven’t even admitted to their eight year-olds where chicken nuggets originate, and it leaves me speechless.
If you’re afraid of traumatising your children, take baby steps in the way you talk about it.
Answer their questions, and nothing more. If they have a follow-up question, answer that, but don’t tell them lies. This is a pretty safe rule of thumb to ensure you don’t give them more than they can handle.
Death is the only certain thing in life. So if you willingly spent years making the tooth fairy seem real, don’t forget to also prepare your children for some of the most critical experiences of their lives.
Do you have a story that you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing almara.abgarian@metro.co.uk.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/09/teach-children-about-death-12656116/
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