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I was told our dog had gone to live on a farm. For a long time afterwards I pestered to be allowed to visit the dog on said farm, and was told it would be too upsetting for him. "He wouldn't understand."
Years later I found out the dog had run away, gotten into a field, and killed a sheep. He was identified by the farmer, and someone official came to our house and took him away to be shot.
I wish they had just told me he'd been run over.
You tell them, gently, directly and as a matter of fact. Then you pick up the pieces.
Tell the truth kindly. That doesn't include comforting lies about "afterlife".
It's an uncomfortable, sweaty-palm conversation that needs to happen. Sugarcoating it isn't going to help in the long run.
When I was a kid I had two cats. One of them, the older cat, got run over by a car one day. My parents told me about it that night. I was like 8 years old and it absolutely devastated me, but knowing what happened allowed me to grieve properly and let all of my feelings out.
My other cat just disappeared one day, and although I suspect that she also died in a similar manner, not knowing the truth always gave me hope that one day she would show back up on my doorstep meowing to be let inside.
My point is that if you try to obfuscate the subject, the risk is that your kid won't properly understand what happened until much later in life and all the unprocessed emotions can cause trauma. Bluntness might seem cruel in the moment, but you have to do it. Ask for their full attention, sit them down, and tell them what happened, and offer comfort in whatever way you can. The news will hurt them, and they will possibly lash out at you, but eventually they will recover from it and go back to feeling normal again.
Good luck, OP.
When I was little, perhaps 5 at the most, a family pet died.
My parents told me it died matter-of-factly.
That's what you do.
Okay. That's good to hear from someone who's been through it
You tell them. You explain it. And you focus on the joy of the dog's life, while acknowledging the grief because the dog is gone.
Everyone with a live dog, raise your hand!
Sally, put your hand down.
“If you got a dog and you know it clap your hands!
No so fast sally.
Give the gift of never having to wonder what to talk about in therapy.
Don't lie. You owe them the truth and it's a learning opportunity for them to grow emotionally before having to deal with a human death. Emotional Intelligence is just as important as being able to read.
Analogies can help but don't hide behind them. Greive together. Have a gesture, no matter how simple that encourages closure. Perhaps go through photos of the pet with them and ask which should be framed or printed or put on the fridge or something like that.
Talk to them about the emotions you are having, how those emotions feel and allow them to also have emotions, especially in the coming weeks when they miss them. But you don't have to lie about what you are feeling or make a huge deal about. Don't rush to fill the void too quickly. Comfort, yes, perhaps a new pet in due time. But not immediately as that cheapens the connection from being with an individual to being a role.
It sounds cruel for me to say I hope your kid has to endure many human deaths in their life but the alternative is either for them to have far too short of a life or for then to become unattached.
And I hope they will also be there for their friends when their friends have to deal with a loss. Kids model behaviour more then they do as they are taught, so it's an opportunity to model that kind of behavior and emotional support.
I had to deal with two of my grandparents dying before the first dog I remembered died. She was hit by a car; my parents woke us up and sat us down in my sister's room. They told us gently that she was hit by a car and was killed, that she wouldn't have felt any pain.
We were, of course, upset about it. But, the simple, direct, and gentle delivery of the news I think gave less distress than the lies that other parents would tell.
Had to go trough this with our 3yr old 2 years ago. dog got an untreatable cancer diagnosis. We bought a daniel tiger book about his fish dying and read it to her quite a few times. We also kept mentioning that the dog was sick. A couple of months later the dog had to be put to sleep, we did this during her naptime and told her beforehand that she (dog) was going to die like the fish in the book.
My daughter was sad after, but not devastated (I was) and to this day she will out of nowhere say that she misses our dog Bailey
*edit to clarify my daughter wasn't dying
we did this during her naptime and told her beforehand that she was going to die like the fish in the book.
You told her the dog is going to die, right??
We left it ambiguous, gotta keep them littles on their toes
I'm sorry that happened to you.
Thanks. It's never easy losing our furry friends. They give their everything to us while they are in our lives. Only fair we give everything when they go.
You win a gold medal
"Hey kid, your dog died."
Honest and direct is the way to go. Saying something else like "they went to a farm" would just make you lose credibility later.
Same about any notions of heaven, souls or afterlife.
Hot take: pretending Santa is real also makes you lose credibility later. People often call me a grinch for saying this though
We have a somewhat different take on it - Santa is real. For kids, Santa is that person that brings you presents and treats and stuff like that. But the ting is, there is a person who does all that, so for that kid, you are Santa, even if they don't know it.
When each of our kids would eventually ask 'Is Santa real?' we would tell them that Santa is real - it's everyone doing something for someone else and only expecting their happiness in return. It's the parent that stays up late and carefully lays out all the fancy presents and treats, then sits back to take in the joy from the kids in the morning.
Then we ask if they want to help be Santa; I've not gotten a 'no' to that question.
We are in agreement on that one. I have never once told my child santa was real. When I was a kid it always bothered me that adults didn't have enough respect to tell the truth. As an adult I remember that feeling and wont be passing it on to my own children. Trust me, the "magic of christmas" is still there without the lies.
There is a very well written children’s book “The Hare-Shaped Hole” which is a gentle way to explain loss.
Our dog died badly and the kids witnessed it. It was sudden. The dog's lungs filled with fluid.
The kids still talk about that day sometimes.
We had to resuscitate the dog enroute to the vet.
That was a hard day.
Death is part of life.
Grief and sadness too. There's no reason to keep these from small children.
Just yesterday a 4yo told me about the death & burial of their grandfather. Yes, she cried. But she's a very happy child.
Of course you help them process it. Books and stories can help.
The “best” way is to prep them before it happens and explain what’s coming
It think it’s important to plant this seed early, I would always joke about how the dogs are here “for a good time not for a long time” when my kids were growing up, it also encouraged them to live in the moment with our pets. Speak openly about the dog aging like you might to an adult peer, that way your child learns these scary thoughts are safe to have and you share them too so they can come to you for comfort. Obviously this is age appropriate advice little kids don’t need that last part.
Get them to watch Lion King with the circle of life song
I’d need more context to give you a real answer but personally:
Do it like any “we need to talk” adult talks, keep it simple explain what happened, give age appropriate details, and tell them it’s ok to cry/be mad/be sad for a long time, etc. encourage them to express their feelings in that moment and then in recovery share with them when something reminded you of the pet or things related to the pet, it seems counter intuitive but they are having these same thoughts and feelings and by saying them out loud you’re saying it’s ok to feel this and we can grieve together.
Hope this helps
Since you didn't give the age of the kid, I'll propose a middle ground between fully lying and being too hard on the kid:
When I was little my dad told me our dog passed away in his sleep and he didn't want me to see it. He talked about the joys of life and the negatives and how he wasn't really living anyways at his old age.
In actually the dog got so old it could hardly stand by himself so he went to the vet and got him put down. He explained this a couple years later when I was old enough to understand, though I did put two and two together by that point.
My family never did the “live on a farm” thing. I thought that was just a TV trope. Don’t lie to kids about that stuff. They will experience death more often as they grow up, and it is on us as parents to help guide them through the grieving process and give them the coping skills they will need to handle loss.
How old? How often have they been exposed to the concept from stories or media or such? Agree with @onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe that you just tell them but for anyone who comes across here with kids it might be good to keep in mind with what exposure your kids get before it hits in reality.
When I was 9 years old, my golden lab got hit and killed by a car.
He was always an outdoors dog. He just showed up on our country property when I was about 3-4 years old and decided to stay there, so we vaccinated him and gave him a collar. I named him Rusty because of his coloring.
He was an old dog at the end. Blind in one eye, hearing was going, and he had bad arthritis. He liked to just lounge around and fawn over me. Sweetest dog ever. There's a lake across the road from my house, through a thin forested property, and he would trot down there for a swim every now and then to soothe his aching bones. One day, he popped out of the woods on his way home and got hit by a car on the road.
My mother didn't plan to tell me about it. She didn't want to risk traumatizing me with my first death, so she was just going to ignore it for as long as possible. Rusty would disappear for days on end, so it wouldn't be unusual for him to be gone for a while. Then when I'd start asking questions, she'd suggest that he probably migrated somewhere new.
I was playing in my front yard one day when a minivan came up my driveway. A lady hopped out and handed me a small plastic bag. She said, "Here's your dog's collar. I figured you'd probably want it. I'm sorry for what happened to him." Then she just hopped back in her car and drove off, leaving me staring blankly after her. 'What was that all about?!'
I went inside and showed my mom the bag, told her some lady just handed it to me, and asked her what happened to Rusty. My mom immediately broke down crying, which made me cry, and we both just hugged and cried for a while.
My mom was furious that some lady just handed off a dead dog's collar to a 9-year old instead of finding an adult. She explained what happened to Rusty and said they were going to bury his remains in our backyard. She absolutely refused to let me see him, though. She said she wanted me to remember him as the childhood friend I grew up with, not as a corpse run over by a car. I wasn't allowed into the field out back behind my house until my dad had finished burying him.
So yeah, my first experience with death was with my first dog, and my mother could've handled it much better. But getting a good cry out with her did wonders for helping me deal with it.
I'd say the Scary Movie 3's "everyone around you is dying" is better than what my parents did once our cat was old and put down. They lied that the neighbor had droven over him and he had suffered so they had taken the cat to the vet to be put down. I got to pet the dead cat before we all buried him in our garden. I held hatred towards the neighbor until I grew old enough to see through the lie..
So I'd say that the petting, goodbyes and burial was good. But the lie was unnecessary. You can be pretty damn honest with kids, they like it because they're always lied to.. I loved adults who were honest with me and I see kids like me when I'm honest to them.
How old is the kid? I still wouldn't know without more information, but theres a massive difference between a 4yo and a 10yo
Hey, do you remember the dog?