At an early age, a child actively explores the world around him with the help of his senses. But over time, his consciousness develops, and the baby begins to analyze the information received. So he comes to an important discovery - everything has an end. The child develops a fear of death. At the same time, he is not only afraid of dying himself, but also terrified of losing loved ones. The fear of death can manifest itself both openly and underlie other fears (fear of illness, attack, war, darkness, etc.).
Why and at what age do children begin to fear death?
In the first years of life, such a concept as “death” does not arouse the child’s interest. He perceives all surrounding objects as constant. But over time, the baby gains ideas about time, space and comes to the realization that any life has a beginning and an end. This discovery stuns the developing consciousness, and the child begins to worry very much about himself and his family, and a persistent fear appears.
Every child has this fear to a greater or lesser extent. The cause of a strong fear of death is often the loss of a parent or another very close person. In addition, children who are often ill, overly emotional and impressionable, as well as children who are brought up in a single-parent family, are often susceptible to such a phobia. As for gender differences, girls experience fear more often than boys.
Of course, there are children who are not afraid of death at all. Often the reason for this is that parents create an artificial world around the baby, protecting him from the slightest shocks. However, such children often grow up to be indifferent egoists who do not worry about anyone. At the same time, the absence of worries about death is observed in children of chronic alcoholics and is due to their low emotional sensitivity, instability of interests and feelings.
The fear of death is not a deviation, but, on the contrary, indicates the normal development of the child’s psyche. The baby will have to understand and experience this fear. If it is not processed, but is driven inside the consciousness, it torments the child for many years, combining with other phobias and interfering with full communication.
At the age of five, it becomes necessary for the baby to feel himself. The fear of losing this state transforms into the fear of death. This is why many children are afraid to fall asleep and have bad dreams. In sleep, the sense of self is lost, which is somewhat reminiscent of death. Tomorrow for a child turns out to be beyond the horizon of reality.
A little later (at about six years old), boys and girls sometimes dream of their own death - in a dream they are eaten by a lion or a crocodile, the notorious Baba Yaga wants to grab them and roast them in her oven.
The child’s psyche continues to develop, and thanatophobia (this is what psychology calls the fear of death) becomes more generalized: the child is afraid of being in a confined space, being buried alive, or contracting a fatal disease.
Often the fear of death entails the fear of falling asleep
If some guys are afraid to die themselves, to become “nothing”, they don’t understand why they were born into the world if they have to die anyway, then others, on the contrary, are afraid of the death of their loved ones, while considering themselves invulnerable. Such children may defiantly declare that they will never die. Such maximalism can manifest itself until adolescence.
In general, as for teenagers, many of them are prone to magical imagination. They invent symbols of death, mysterious signs, fatal coincidences for themselves, tell each other scary stories about vampires, ghosts, the Queen of Spades, the Black Hand, etc. Anxiety about death, as a rule, manifests itself in overly impressionable and emotional girls and boys.
Magical themes attract overly impressionable schoolchildren
However, given the pathological nature of such fear, it can negatively affect the development of the individual, undermine self-confidence, and here it is no longer possible to do without the intervention of a specialist.
Let us also note that the fear of death in childhood can be open (the child is afraid of death directly) or hidden (the child is afraid of sharp objects, fire, heights, choking on food, etc., which again can lead a person to death).
How can you tell if your child is feeling anxious?
Children who are afraid for their parents make statements with the following content: “Mom, will you be old too?”, “Mom, I don’t want you to grow old and die.”, “I want everyone I love, lived for a long, long time." If similar phrases begin to slip into the baby’s speech, it means that at the moment the child is rethinking his previous ideas about life . The kid is trying to accept reality as it is, without embellishment. This process is quite difficult. The child becomes whiny, sad, asks to be held, and demands the attention of the parents.
How to help your child cope with the fear of death
The fear of death, like any childhood phobia, passes or becomes dull over time. Of course, this happens if close people are sensitive to the child and are interested in his inner world. Parents should protect an overly impressionable child from attending funerals, but they should periodically remember deceased relatives so that the child understands that after death a person lives in the memory and hearts of loved ones.
It is unacceptable to use phrases like “If you don’t listen, mom will get sick and die!” Thus, the parents themselves provoke the child’s fear of death at the same time as a feeling of guilt.
A baby who is experiencing any fear needs to be shown increased affection, care and warmth, because in this way his nervous system sends a signal for help. A child's phobia should be treated extremely calmly so as not to intensify the child's experiences. The parent should pretend that he is not at all surprised by the baby’s fears.
To distract a child from unnecessary worries, it is necessary to diversify his life, filling it with new bright colors: once again visit the circus or theater, amusement park, etc., expand the child’s circle of acquaintances.
Many parents have their own minor fears (fear of airplanes, spiders, dogs, thunderstorms, etc.): for the benefit of the child, you need to try to overcome them. At the same time, it is a serious mistake on the part of parents to try to overprotect the baby and isolate him from the worries of the outside world.
Conversations with a child
When talking with your son or daughter on the topic of death, first of all, there is no need to dissemble or evade clear answers. At the same time, adults should choose their words very carefully. You should honestly tell your child that all people, without exception, will die someday, but this will happen only in old age; death is preceded by a long, happy life.
First-person life stories that helped me cope with the death of my mother
I fell out of life for six months after my mother died, then everything was like a fog. They wanted to save me, but I just wanted to see her again. I remember my uncle helped. He just came to our house, took me by the hand and took me out for a walk. We walked in silence for several hours until we were exhausted. The next day I was already a little more alive, during that time some kind of reboot occurred in me.
Milena Rimskaya
Maria Lebedeva
I don’t remember my mother’s funeral; I lost her early – I wasn’t even 15 years old. I went to a psychologist, but my grandmother helped me - she brought me to the cemetery so that I could talk to my mother, see the grave, and say goodbye. It was hard, but at that moment I realized that life goes on, we have to live.
How to rid a child of the fear of death: advice from psychologists
Psychologists consider the fear of death to be one of the key childhood phobias. This theme penetrates the child’s consciousness early, because he observes the change of day and night, seasons, and encounters dead living beings in the environment. This question is even more relevant if the baby has experienced his own sad experience - the loss of a loved one.
According to psychologist M.G. Woodpecker's difficulty in overcoming a child's fear of death is that adults often, deep down in their souls, experience the same experiences. Many people are petrified by the very thought that everything in the world is perishable, and when a small son or daughter begins to ask questions about death, adults become frightened and cannot give an adequate answer that would satisfy and reassure the child.
Consulting psychologist Anna Harutyunyan, who specializes in relationships between parents and children, believes that all types of children's fears are to some extent related to the fear of non-existence. Adults do not need to hush up this topic, because it is an integral part of life itself and affects the content of television content. Since what is most frightening is what is not understood, parents need to tell their child that every living creature goes through a mandatory cycle of birth, development and dying. As for the phrase “death is an eternal sleep,” it should be avoided so as not to cause problems in the baby falling asleep.
Many children are very afraid that both mom and dad will die. In this case, you need to explain to the baby that this will not happen soon, that many joyful events still await him.
E. Sorokina, an educational psychologist of the highest category, calls the fear of death a healthy stage in the development of the child’s psyche. This is as natural for a baby as the fear of getting lost or getting sick. And you should talk to your child about this topic very honestly.
Video on the topic
Psychologists in their video blogs give recommendations on overcoming the fear of death in children.
Psychotherapist Maxim Chekmarev gives recommendations on overcoming the fear of death in a child
Psychologist Victoria Markelova reflects on children's attitude to the topic of death
Are “Bad Dreams” a Bad Sign or a Cure?
A teenager’s “bad” dreams help him cope with severe anxiety, in which he experiences the loss of his parents and learns to move on with it.
This is not a figment of fantasy, this is not self-indulgence. This is how the brain looks for ways to cope with possible unbearable grief. Harvard psychology professor and sleep researcher Deirdre Barrett says, “Dreams that revolve around difficult and frightening situations are actually our brain’s attempts to find a way out.”
Emotions after sleep can be so strong that a teenager walks around under the impression of them the entire school day - although he understands that everything is not happening in truth, in reality everyone is alive. But the experience of overcoming loss is recorded in neural connections.
In the book Why We Sleep, neuroscientist Matthew Walker writes that REM sleep is the only period when the stress hormone norepinephrine does not affect the brain. But at this time, those areas of the brain that are responsible for emotions and memory are active. This is how the brain re-processes unpleasant emotions received during the day, but in the most calm mode. In this phase of sleep, we find solutions to problems that seemed insoluble.
In one of Walker's experiments, participants completed a maze twice. Those who managed to sleep between attempts did better. Sleepers were periodically awakened and asked what they were dreaming about. Those who said they dreamed about a labyrinth did 10 times better on the second attempt than those who dreamed about something else.
Painkiller
Stories will help you survive the most difficult stage: kind, deep, with strong images.
“The novel “Pollyanna” by Elenor Porter, the film “Alpine Story”, the series “Angel on Duty” - such books and films help us, together with the hero, get closer to the important point where pain is replaced by light sadness,” says teacher Olga Filippova.
A literary image can become a driver, a guide to a new reality: there is no longer a loved one there, but there is life, something good is ahead.
“The school curriculum contains a lot of literature about the death of loved ones. It is important that after discussing books, children leave not with questions that they must answer themselves (in grief this threatens retraumatization), but with supportive answers,” notes candidate of psychological sciences Yulia Egorushkina.
Difficult experiences, says Filippova, can also be expressed in creativity: many children begin to write poetry or draw. It is important to support any creative endeavor, even if it seems to you that its motives are reminiscent of tragedy and “stir the soul.”
Dry numbers
How real is a teenager's fear for his parents? So that he does not worry in vain, invite him to think about statistics. It may seem boring, but it’s clear.
According to UNICEF, less than 1% of children in the world are orphans, having lost both parents. Most of them are from poor countries where there are famines, epidemics and wars. The rest are so-called “social” orphans, whose parents are alive but cannot take care of their children.
As of June 1, 2021, there are 32.8 million children living in Russia. According to the Ministry of Education, just over 100 thousand children (0.3%) lost a parent due to death. This is three cases per 1000 children.
Teen anxiety is not a deviation; the fear of death is inherent in us evolutionarily. But, as can be seen from statistics, anxiety is greatly exaggerated by rich imagination (and in adolescence, the area of the brain responsible for creativity begins to mature).
The third stage: what will remain after us
At the third stage - in accepting grief - the child answers the question about the spiritual heritage that the departed person left behind. Dad asked us to be honest - that’s how we try to live. We continue to play the violin: without grandfather, but with thoughts of him. You can spend your entire life harboring a grudge against your grandmother, who passed away too early, or you can thank life every day for the existence of this person, for everything he gave. The second path is bright, correct, on it children grow up, but do not grow old in soul.
“The wound of loss will never fully heal.
But we can influence how this stress affects the child’s future life,” notes Olga Filippova. 5 good books for children about the death of loved ones. Natalya Savushkina, “The Tsar’s Affair” Every summer day in the grandmother’s village is full of adventures, but everything changes with the death of her grandfather. In this book, adults sensitively and correctly support the girl. Maria Parr, “Waffle Heart” The heroes of the book live on a small Norwegian farm - they make friends, learn to care, and also experience the first loss of loved ones in their lives. Amelie Fried, “Is Grandfather in a Suit?” Perhaps the best book for a first conversation about death. A kind of diary of a hero asking important questions about the passing of loved ones. Fredrik Backman, “Grandmother told me to bow and say that she asks for forgiveness.” This story is about spiritual heritage - a beloved grandmother leaves, but the adventures with which she filled her life remain. Daria Dotsuk, “House on the Cliff” The heroine plunges into a fictional world: real life has changed a lot after dad “went on a business trip.” You can’t hide the death of your loved ones from your children, I just want to write it in the summary.
First stage: the child hears nothing
Psychologists distinguish three stages of grief perception - they are relevant for both children and adults who have lost loved ones. The first is shock, the second is grief: at this stage, the loss presses with all its force. The third stage is acceptance: the child may not reach this stage, getting stuck in suffering if he is not supported in time. Or get there by a roundabout route after many years, losing vital energy along the way.
“At the shock stage, the baby is as if stunned: he will not hear you, no matter what you say. He distances himself from what is happening, creates a kind of vacuum around himself: this is the defensive reaction of the psyche. During this period, it is useless to talk to the child about the loss, or at least to initiate these conversations,” says teacher and psychologist Olga Filippova.
It is important for a child, if he has already reached school age, to take part in seeing off the deceased: funerals, memorable events.
“Moderation is important here; evaluate the load taking into account the child’s condition. But there should be an opportunity to say goodbye to a loved one,” notes Olga Vladimirovna.
During this period, the main thing is to create a gentle, safe, warm atmosphere at home. There is no need to try to distract your child with holidays and active positive impressions. You should not go to the other extreme: empathize intensely, feel sorry for the baby. All you need is calm and warmth. The shock stage in children lasts on average one and a half to two months.
