During the motorcade carrying JFK’s casket to the cemetery, cameras switched to the preschool age John John, looking on and saluting the flag draped caisson. After the family returned to the White House, however, John John went immediately to the Oval Office in search of his father. When one of my sons was four, we found a dead bird in our yard. I put it in a plastic bag and told Rick that we were going to bury it. He asked my why I didn’t just put it in the trash can. Puzzled, I asked him why we should do that. Without hesitation he said, “It will be easier for him to get out of the trash can.”

Young children do not understand the concept of death. Life and death are biological concepts that also presuppose an understanding of life processes that most children do not acquire until the age of eight or nine. At that age they go through a brief period of anxiety when they are shocked to learn that their parents, like all living things, are mortal. So the question becomes one of what to say to a young child who has lost a friend or a grandparent or other relative to whom he or she was attached? Knowing what not to say is at least as important as knowing what to say. For example, it is best to avoid giving explanations. If you say, “Grandpa died because he was sick.” the child takes this to mean that everyone who gets sick dies and worries if it will happen to him or her. If you say something like “God took him because he was so good,” the child may take this as an invitation to be bad.

It is best to be factual and supportive, something like, “Grandpa died and we won’t ever see him again, but we loved him very much and he loved us.” Although young children do not mourn the loss of a beloved person at the time of his or death, this does not mean that the mourning will never occur. It is just delayed. This usually happens in adolescence when young people attain the new mental abilities that allow them to reconstruct their personal history. Adolescents who lost a parent at an early age, for example, may try and imagine some of things they might have done with the parent had he or she lived.

As humans we are blessed or cursed with the ability to foresee our own demise. If we approach the idea of death in a factual and caring way with young children, we provide them with the best preparation for their eventual acceptance of the reality of death.