How would you tell your four year old that grandma may not be with us for much longer. My mother in-law has inoperable lung cancer an has been having chemotherapy, she now has one of those Morphin sticks to help her feel comfortable when in pain. How ten year old understands but how do I prepare or four year old.
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You don’t, a four year old won’t understand
I know they may not understand, but how would you tell them they can't see grandma any more, as we go over every Monday night
I didn’t go into full detail with any of my children, except my eldest who was 6-7 at the time because he was the closest. Even then it wasn’t a lot of information, it just enough to prepare for it.
Go to your local library and ask them what books they have about death of a family member that are age appropriate. I was able to get some books about death of pets when my boys were quite young and we found out one of our dogs didn’t have a lot of time left. It helped me with age appropriate ways to discuss it with my boys. My boys are now 15 and 13 and didn’t experience the death of a human family member until about 18 months ago. Even though they were older and understood more, they weren’t given a lot of details about the deaths of their great grandfather and then grandfather 4 months later, other than they were very sick and their bodies couldn’t cope with the illness any longer, they’ve gone on to a better place where they are no longer in pain. I encourage my youngest in particular to remember happy stories about them and how proud they were of everything he’s achieved. My youngest also picked out some photos that we had printed then put in a frame for his room.