How Children Perceive The Word And Concept "death"

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The child's concept of death has very little to do with our concept of death. The child is not familiar with the horrors of decay, the cold of the grave, the endless "nothing" and all that is associated with the word "death". The fear of death is alien to him, so he plays with this terrible word and threatens another child: “If you do it again, you will die”. For example, a child of elementary grades, returning from some natural history museum, may say to his mother: “Mom, I love you very much. When you die, I will make a stuffed animal out of you and put you here in the room so that I can always see you.” The childish concept of death is so little like ours.

From one ten-year-old boy, shortly after his father's death, I heard him, to all my surprise, the following phrase: “I understand that dad is dead, but why he doesn’t come home to have supper, I can’t understand her in any way”.

To die means for a child who is generally relieved of the form of death-throes, the same thing as leaving, no longer disturbing the survivors. He does not distinguish whether this absence is realized - by departure or death.

One more example. The child felt that the nanny was unfriendly to him. “Let Josephine die,” he told his father. “Why should she die? - asked the father reproachfully. "Isn't it enough if she just leaves?" "No," the child replied, "then she will come again."

It happens that a child dreams that one of the parents has died. Dreams of the death of parents in the vast majority of cases concern a parent of the same sex with the sleeping person, i.e. a man in most cases dreams of the death of his father, and a woman dreams of the death of his mother. The situation is as if the boys see in the father, and the girls - in the mother as rivals of their love, the elimination of which can only be beneficial to them.

Naturally, the situation develops so that the father pampers the daughter, and the mother pampers the son. The child notices a preference and rebelles against the parent who resists such pampering.

"Let Mommy die, Daddy will marry me, I will be his wife." In a child's life, this desire by no means excludes the fact that the child dearly loves his mother. If a little boy can sleep with his mother as soon as his father leaves, and after his return must return to the nursery, then he may very easily have a desire for his father to be constantly absent, and so that he himself would keep his place with his dear, dear mom. One of the means to achieve this desire is, obviously, that the father should die, because the child knows the dead, like grandfathers, never, they never come.

This is the case with brothers and sisters. The child is absolutely selfish, he intensely experiences his needs and uncontrollably strives to satisfy them, especially against his rivals, other children and mainly against his brothers and sisters. Before the birth of his brothers and sisters, he was the only one in the family; now they tell him that he will have a brother or sister. The child then looks at the alien and says in a categorical tone: "Let the stork carry him back." The child consciously takes into account the damage that a newborn brother or sister can inflict on him. Therefore, children may show aggressive behavior towards newborn babies and a desire for the latter to die.

So, dear parents, do not be alarmed if your children talk about death. Try to ask them how they understand the word “death”.

Based on materials from Sigmund Freud.