has your child lost anyone significant in their lives?

mommatomany · #1 (**permalink**) 03-19-2009, 1:41 AM

my children have lost their grandfather, and now a cousin in a relatively short amount of time. it pains me to listen to a 3 year old talk about heaven. last week he asked again when his grandfather would be returning from there. i told him never. he asked again 3 more times, each time i gave the same response. until i said, "are you just ignoring what i'm saying because you don't like the answer and you are hoping i'll tell you he'll be back soon." he said, "yeah." break my heart.

has anyone else had to help their child through this?

mothergoose · #2 (**permalink**) 03-23-2009, 5:16 PM

I guess part of it depends on if you believe in an afterlife. We believe we will see the ones we love again when we die. We have also tried to teach our children that everyone/everything dies eventually--it is normal and okay. We are not supposed to live forever. And that the person who died is happy in heaven and it is just us that are sad because we miss them, and that's okay. I currently have a sister dying from cancer. She lives far away so they hardly know her, but I feel I am teaching them a little now by how I react to it.

mlb · #3 (**permalink**) 03-26-2009, 12:49 AM

My oldest son lost his great grandmother when he was 5 and recently my sister had a daughter who was stillborn and all of the kids have had a tough time with that. My sister's best friend gave birth to a baby with trisomy 18 and she died at 6 weeks (9 months after my sister's daughter died). When we saw her friend (ours too), her daughter had already passed away. Zach asked me where the baby was and I told him that she was in heaven and he asked why all of our babies were dying. Not an easy thing to explain.