Death, Society, and
Human Experience
9th Edition
Robert Kastenbaum
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Chapter Ten:
Death in the World of
Childhood
This multimedia product and its contents are protected under copyright law. The following are prohibited by law:
•Any public performance or display, including transmission of any image over a network;
•Preparation of any derivative work, including the extraction, in whole or in part, or any images;
•Any rental, lease, or lending of the program.
•
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Adult Assumptions
About Children and Death
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Children are seldom given the opportunity in family
discussions to talk about death-related topics
• Adults often have their own fears, doubts, and
conflicts, which often get communicated to their
children
• Freud thought that parents wanted to believe that
their children live in a fairy-tale world safe from the
reality of death
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Children Do Think About Death
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Children’s experiences of death and loss may become lifelong memories
Death in Children’s Songs and Games
• Ring-around-the-rosie
• played during the plague, 14th century
• “rosies” are symptoms
• Explicitly found in hide-and-seek and tag games
• “Death” is hiding, and then tries to catch someone
• Whever is “it” is not “alive” and must find a victim
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Lessons from the
Research Case Histories
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It is the death of particular people or animals that
enlists the child’s concern
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Death-related experiences, attitudes and
behaviors are part of the intimate flow of life
between children and their parents
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There may be several different orientations toward
death within the same household
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Lessons from the
Research Case Histories
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Parents whose own discomfort interferes with their
responses to their children’s death-related
curiosity are likely to perpetuate these anxieties for
another generation
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There is now a transitional generation of parents
who are trying to communicate in an open manner
with their children, although their own experience
was of family silence about death
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Stages of Death Comprehension
in Childhood (Nagy)
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Research conducted in 1948/1969, involving 378
children, ages 3 to 10
• Stage 1, ages 3 to 5, Focus on Absence
• Very curious about death and death-related items, like
coffins, the cemetery, and also the funeral
• Death is a continuation of life but in a diminished form
(such as diminished sight or hearing)
• Death is temporary
• Death is departure and separation
• Death aroused anxiety
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Stages of Death Comprehension
in Childhood (Nagy)
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Stage 2, ages 5 to 9, Focus on Finality
• Death is represented as a person
• Death is dangerous, invisible, like a skeleton, and
comes out in the dark
• Death has mysterious power
• Belief that death might still be eluded (for example, you
might get killed crossing the street, but not if you look
both ways and be careful about crossing the street)
• Death is not recognized as universal and personal
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Stages of Death Comprehension
in Childhood (Nagy)
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Stage 3, beginning about age 9, Focus on
Personal, Universal, and Inevitable
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Realizes that death is final
Realizes that death will come to him or her as well
Discussion of death has a more adult quality
May add a moral, poetic, or religious dimension
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Additional Research Findings
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Children with superior intellectual and verbal ability
demonstrated more advanced death concepts than others
their same age
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No difference in death concepts based on SES
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Gender: boys are more likely to depict violent deaths than
girls
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Younger children seem to focus on separation anxiety
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Older children see death as scary and begin to use
symbols to represent death concepts
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Cultural Influences on Children’s
Concepts of Death
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U.S. children depict violent causes of death;
Swedish children depicted chapels, cemeteries,
tombstones, caskets, etc.
• Muslim children seem to grasp the universality and
inevitability of death at an earlier age.
• Muslim children valued praying for the dead
• Cultural influences also include:
• Historical events, like the Columbine shootings
• Scenes depicted in media and digital games
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Death in the Family:
Effects on the Children
Parents’ attention and energy are focused
elsewhere (away from the needs of the surviving
children)
• Bereaved children may express their distress in
ways that seem disconnected from the loss
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Problems in school
Displaying anger with family or playmates
Fear of the dark or of being alone
No obvious signs of sorrow (be brave, no crying)
Often express memories through activities shared
with the parent who died
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Death in the Family:
Children’s Responses
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Focus on a few strong images, scenes or activities
• May begin criticizing the deceased (out of anger)
• Children whose father died: (based on research)
• Tend to be more submissive, dependent, introverted
• Higher frequency of maladjustment, emotional
disturbance, suicidality, delinquent, and criminal
behavior
• Perform less adequately in school and on cognitive tests
• Experience more physical symptoms
• Become concerned that the family will fall apart
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Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD)
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An officially recognized diagnosis since 1980
• Children with PTSD may have:
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Difficulty paying attention and concentrating
Difficulty in making and keeping friends
A tendency to be frightened
Recurring anxious dreams
A need to express the trauma through play
Particularly noted following the terrorist attacks of
9-11-01
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Helping Children Cope
with Bereavement
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Develop and maintain an open communication
pattern with children
• Give children the opportunity to decide about
attending the funeral
• Check out what the child is thinking and feeling –
do not assume that we know what death means to
him or her
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Helping Children Cope
with Bereavement
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Encourage the expression of feelings
• Provide convincing assurance that there will
always be somebody to love and look after the
child
• Professional counseling should be considered if
the bereaved children are at special risk
• Select an age-appropriate book or two that speaks
to a child’s sense of loss after a death
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The Dying Child: Stages in the
Acquisition of Information
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I have a serious illness.
I know what drugs I am receiving and what they are
supposed to do.
I know the relationship between my symptoms and the
kind of treatment I am getting.
I realize now that I am going through a cycle of feeling
worse, getting better, then getting worse again. The
medicines don’t work all the time.
I know that this won’t go on forever. There’s an end to
the remissions and the relapses. When the drugs stop
working, I will die pretty soon.
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Care of the Dying Child
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Hospice has extended to caring for children
Attention to the following needs can enhance the care of a
dying child:
• The opportunity to express their concerns through
conversation, play, drawing, or writing
• Confirmation that they are still a normal and valuable
people
• Assurance that family members and other important
people will not abandon the children
• Reassurance that they will not be forgotten
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Problems Observed in the
Siblings of Dying Children
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Confusion about the role they are supposed to play in the
family
• Feeling deceived or rejected by parents
• Uncertainty about the future
• Changes in the relationships among siblings
• Feelings of guilt and ambivalence
• Frustrated in not being able to express their feelings and
fears to their parents who are so preoccupied with the
feelings of the dying child and their own feelings
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Guidelines for Sharing
A Child’s Death Concerns
Be a good observer of your child’s behavior
• Do not wait or plan for “one big tell-all”
• Do not expect all of the child’s responses to be obvious
and immediate
• Help the child remain secure as part of the family
• Use simple and direct language
• Be accessible
• Be aware of all the children in the family
• Keep the relationship going
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The Right to Decide:
Should the Child’s Voice be Heard?
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Do children have rights when medical treatment is
unsympathetic or abusive?
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Do children have the right to participate in
decisions regarding the quality of their own lives
and deaths?
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Can a child be given a legally “competent” status
when it comes to decisions about treatment?
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Glossary: New Terms
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Affect
Aphasic
Bereavement
Cystic Fibrosis
Death Anxiety
Dissociative Episodes
Heuristic
Imaginary Companion
Introversion
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Leukemia
Personification
Plague
Post-traumatic Stress
Disorder
Separation Anxiety
Sibling
Trauma
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