The Death of a Pet - Further Thoughts and Book Ideas

In my last post, I talked about the death of a pet. These are some follow-up points you might find worth thinking about. Also included are books on this topic that I think are useful and comforting.

• Be sure that you share the sad news with all the important people in your child's life – teachers, babysitters, grandparents. You can tell them what your conversations have covered so far. Constructing an understanding of death is the work of a lifetime, and you have laid a few foundational bricks. Those close to your family may, if invited by your child, lay a few more. At the very least, they will want to commiserate.
• Avoid euphemisms. People use the phrase “passed away” a lot these days, but it has no meaning to a child. Not only is it unclear, but it delivers a vague hope of return. Get comfortable with words like death, dead, died, dying. They won't bite! And definitely avoid using “sleep” as a metaphor for death. This can be scary.
• If the pet who died was young, you won't be able to use the “old age” scenario described in my previous blog. Explain that it's very unusual for young animals to get this sick, and that the illness was quite serious – not at at all like a cold or tummy virus. Tell your child that the doctors tried really hard to make Muffy well again, but she was just too sick. 
• A word about euthanasia: it's really hard for young kids to understand the need to “put down” an old or suffering pet. Naturally optimistic, they see this as giving up. It's nearly impossible for them to understand it as an act of compassion. In this case, I'd just say the doctors tried everything but couldn't keep the pet alive. (This is not untrue. The veterinarian could not, in good conscience, keep Muffy alive.) By the time kids enter adolescence, they might have the maturity to accompany you when Muffy is euthanized. For the older child (I'd say a very mature ten-year-old, at the youngest) I'd check with the vet and give my child a choice about participating. Saying goodbye and seeing the animal die peacefully might be really consoling.
• Unfortunately, a lot of modern, urban kids only experience the sad part of the life cycle. So many of our pets are “fixed” (and IMHO, that's a good thing) that most kids don't get to see animals being born. Look for ways to expose them to this joyous and awe-inspiring part of the life cycle through media, or a visit to a farm, zoo or county fair.
• Kids can be immensely curious about what happens after death. If you are asked, I think it's best to tell your child what you believe. If you have faith in an afterlife, and you hope to be reunited with your pet, say so. If you're a nonbeliever, it may be tempting to paint a picture you yourself don't actually buy. That just kicks the discussion down the road. Also, it erodes trust.  You can say that the pet will be forever in our hearts and minds.  But what if each parent has a different idea of what happens after death? Why not? Each parent can say what (s)he believes while respectfully honoring the other parent's view. In the end, we all choose what and how we believe. Our kids will too.

Here are some really wonderful books about the death of an animal:

Brown, Margaret Wise, The Dead Bird is a classic that simply and eloquently depicts a group of children who bury a dead bird they have found.

Kantrowitz, Mildred, When Violet Died depicts the “appropriate fun, yet honorable funeral for a pet bird [and] uses the cycle of life and the bright future of a pregnant cat.” (Parent review on Amazon)

Viorst, Judith, The Tenth Good Thing About Barney is a realistic, tender tale about a pet cat’s funeral. The neighbor kids in this book disagree about whether Barney is in heaven.

When your child starts asking questions about people dying, or death in general, have a look at:

Grollman, Earl A., Talking About Death, A Dialogue Between Parent and Child is something of a “bible” on this topic. It is really two books in one, a text for children and a companion book for the parent which includes resources, an extensive bibliography and more.

Mellonie, Bryan and Ingpen, Robert, Lifetimes, The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children provides a poetic yet straightforward explanation of the life cycle.

The Death of a Pet

Dear Susie,

Our dog died last night. My sons are just five and 2 ½. This is going to be such a hard conversation! I'd appreciate any thoughts you can share.

Dear Parent,

I'm so sorry! We always had a houseful of pets and I loved each and every one of them. This never gets easier, does it?

As with any  "tender topic," I think the best rule of thumb is to say the smallest true thing you can.  Your child's questions will lead the rest of the way.  You can start with, "Something very sad has happened in our family.  You know that Muffy lived a long, long time. [I sure hope this is the case.  If not, modify. I'll talk more about this in my next post.] She had a wonderful, happy, doggy life. She got very old and finally her body stopped working and she died.  I'm going to miss her so much."

Then let the questions come.  Try to answer them simply and honestly.  Please try not to worry that you may cry during this talk. The topic is sad – and your sadness, though a little upsetting, will make sense to your kids. Crying gives them permission to grieve too. Faking a stoic attitude would create a mismatch between your words and your demeanor.  This would be awkward for both you and your kids. To a certain extent, you will all be comforting one another, which is part of family life and family love. Your child's mirror neurons (related to empathy) will be firing like crazy. That's how we learn to care about, and care for, each other.

Your younger child may be a little baffled by everything about this conversation. For him, the biggest challenge will probably be to grasp the permanence of death. He may ask for Muffy a lot in the coming days. It could take weeks for him to understand that Muffy's not coming back. Your five-year-old may already have an understanding of death as permanent. He could be comforted by starting a little “memory book” of pictures and recollections that you can all contribute to, over time.

I'm a big believer in pet funerals. Doing something simple but ceremonial at home honors life and seals a memory. Let the kids help plan and carry out the funeral or memorial. When I was a little girl, we buried them under my favorite tree, right near my swing. I followed suit with my own kids. (Please don't flush Swimmy down the toilet! It's a clean and practical thing to do, but think of the message it sends.)

Questions may come fast and furious, or very gradually. What kinds of questions might your older one ask? We as adults tend to get past the nuts and bolts of burying or cremating a pet and focus on how sad we are. But for a four- or five-year-old, often the emphasis is on “the science of death.” Is Muffy asleep? Can she feel her body? Is she thinking? I would never liken death to sleep (this can be scary) but sometimes kids who see a dead animal wonder if it's sleeping. If, and only if, your child expresses curiosity about this, point out that death is not at all like sleep. When Muffy was alive, she was doing a lot of things while she slept – her lungs were breathing, her heart was beating, her brain was dreaming, her stomach was digesting food. Now none of those things is happening because her body has stopped working. (A solid understanding of this makes the idea of cremation or burial a lot less upsetting.)

Parents have sometimes told me they didn't want to have small pets such as goldfish or hamsters “because they die.” I would argue that this is one very good reason to have them! Experiencing the life cycle on a manageable scale informs and steels your child for the profounder losses that will follow throughout life. Without suffering loss, a child cannot learn that loss is survivable. Maybe I should state that another way: suffering a loss will teach your child that it's survivable.

The Picky Eater

Dear Susie,

My best friend's little girl, age 2 ½,  is a very adventurous eater.  Also, she eats a good amount at every sitting.  My daughter, who is a little older, eats like a bird and always says "I don't like that" when any unfamiliar food is put before her.  My friend and I share recipes all the time, and our families have similar tastes in food.  What could be causing this?

Dear Parent,

Right up there with toilet learning and oppositional behavior, this is an often-raised topic among parents of toddlers.  Kids in this age range are notoriously poor eaters.  I'd say the “adventurous eater” is the exception, not the rule.  Often I point out two kids at snacktime.  They are about the same height and weight, both equally robust and active.  Yet one eats like a stevedore and the other is – well, in the words of one of my moms, “he's an air fern,” apparently subsisting on airborne nutrients!  It would be nearly impossible to find two grownups with such disparate eating habits who share the same physiognomy and energy level.  What's up with that?

I have to think that Nature protected our hunter-gatherer ancestors by making sure that just-weaned two- and three-year-olds could thrive in times of plenty (without getting too chubby to keep up with the clan) while also being able to subsist when food was scarce.  The gorging stevedore and the air fern may be simply playing out these feast/famine conditions, respectively.  And both kids are fine!

But, since no one seems to worry about the hearty eater, let's focus on why some kids are picky about food.  In some cases, the answer is found in temperament.  Back in the fifties, Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess and others began studying infant temperament.  Their longitudinal study provided concrete evidence of innate personality traits.  This merely provided scientific underpinnings to long-held folk wisdom.  Shakespeare knew it (remember “the four humours”?) and for that matter, so does any parent with more than one kid! 

One feature of temperament, as identified by Thomas and Chess, is Approach.  Approach is about how a person enters into an unfamiliar situation.  For “cautious approach” folks, new foods, new people and new places pose more of a challenge than an opportunity.  These people tend to be that way for life.  Another feature of temperament identified by the researchers is Sensory Awareness.  Kids who are acutely sensitive to sights, smells and textures may balk if the carrots are cut differently, or if the butter on the asparagus is unsalted today.

That said, some toddlers/preschoolers just go through a picky phase.   Some hints on helping a balky eater:

✔     First, try to adopt a blasé, take-it-or-leave-it attitude.  Avoid coaxing and bribing. If you are over-invested, you child can sense this and may try use it for attention and power.  Not pretty!  A toddler's natural obstinacy can extend to the dining table especially if (s)he knows that this is a good way to get your goat.  If I've learned one thing, it's that trying to control either end of a child's alimentary canal (what goes in and what comes out) is a fight you cannot win.  Rely on good vitamin supplements to fill the gaps in the diet.  And vent your frustration on this subject out of earshot of your child.  “He's picky eater” can become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

✔     Introduce new foods one-by-one, gradually but consistently.  A daily dose of unfamiliar foods makes this child feel as disoriented and overstimulated as you might be if I dragged you to a different shopping mall every day.  Experts say that you might have to present a food ten or twenty times before the child will try it.  Most parents give up before the child has become sufficiently familiar with the look and smell of the new food to venture a taste.

✔     “Ooh” and “ahh” about your food, saying how much you like it and describing why.  Do this spontaneously and casually, not in the context of persuading your child to try something.

✔     Try eating family style, as in a Chinese restaurant.  Allow your child to choose for him/herself from the community platter, assisting only with transferring the food, and only if necessary. Your child will feel a sense of control and autonomy, which reduces tension around eating. (Yes, you will have a few more dishes to wash, but it's actually thriftier, since food that spends time on someone's plate and doesn't get eaten usually ends up in the trash.  Food left on the serving plate is perfectly suitable as leftovers or for packing in school lunches – right?)

✔     Kids like “cute food.”  Broccoli trees can grow on mashed potato islands.  Sandwiches can have faces, or come in funny shapes.  Use your imagination!

✔     Reframe “I don't like it.”  If this is a new food, you can respond, “Sounds like you're not sure what this tastes like.”  This addresses the underlying uncertainly (while piquing your child's curiosity) instead of focusing on the negative.

✔     Kids are often more amenable to eating foods they helped make or which they can put together themselves.  Enlist them to tear lettuce for the salad, or cut soft (or parboiled) veggies with a plastic serrated knife.  Serve tacos with all the fillings displayed so the kids and can choose and assemble their own customized dinner.  They often enjoy dipping veggies in ranch dressing, apple sauce + yogurt, peanut butter or hummus.  (A lot of kids prefer raw veggies to cooked ones, and what's the harm in that?)  They enjoy decorating an English muffin or pita with food, then baking and eating it.  Or try deconstructing a pizza:  serve veggies, mushrooms, chunks of cheese, salami and bread sticks that they can dip in pizza sauce.  Play with your food!  (Not literally.  If this devolves into messing, say “Looks like you're not hungry” and take the food away.)

✔     Indulge the need for sameness at breakfast and lunch, but don't let a child's limited repertoire completely derail your family dinner.  Having mac and cheese every night just to cater to one person is pretty dispiriting for the others, and it sets the wrong tone – narrowing options rather than branching out.  Maybe you can compromise by having that child's favorite once a week. (We had Taco Tuesdays for about ten years.  Sometimes I thought I would go utterly mad...but it was a night off from grumbling.)  And whatever you do, don't become a short-order chef, whipping up that special meal for one kid.  My daughter was something of a picky eater, and would often turn up her nose at my dinner offerings.  I was not willing to make separate meals to accommodate her.  The rule was, if she decided not to have what we were having, she could eat corn flakes for dinner (the only allowable alternative – the idea was that Plan B should be a single non-negotiable option as well being something she could prepare herself.)  This went on for about five years, but both of us survived. In fact, as an adult she loves to eat – and enjoys cooking more than her mother does!

Touching Mom

Dear Susie,

Lately my son Rafe, who just turned five, has started to want to touch my breasts all the time as he did when he was smaller. I breastfed until he was nearly three. After that he would stick his hand down my shirt for comfort – but then in the last year that totally went away. Now he wants to sneak grabs all the time. It is like a little game to him and I think maybe it is comforting for him in some way.

But I'm not comfortable with it. My comfort level is this:  there are times at home when I say it's okay, that he can touch the top part for a sort of quick pat. They're still there. I have said they are part of mommy's private parts and he needs to treat my body with respect – just as he treats his friends and as mommy and daddy treat him. But I had to hold his hands away yesterday – he was being pretty tenacious. 

We have cuddle time before bed – special time with just me where he gets heaps of affection. He gets hugs and kisses a lot during the day. And he definitely knows not to touch others that way and is very conservative with touching others. He's a rule-follower out in the world.

But because this has increased so much the last two weeks, I just wanted to check in with you. I don't want to shame him. I want him to have comfortable feelings around bodies and sexuality. I want to create proper boundaries. Is he just testing?

Dear Parent, 

What an interesting question! I think your instincts are right on this one. We should be clear with others when something makes us uncomfortable. The key here that the behavior went away and came back. Letting Rafe touch and check in (“they're still there” – hilarious!) was appropriate when and just after he was weaning.

But now he's five and your breasts have changed jobs – they are back to being your private parts. (A couple of years ago you probably would have been unfazed if someone caught a peek of your breast when you were nursing in a restaurant or other public place. But I doubt you'd consider going topless now!) Your talk with him about privacy and respect is right on the money. You're accomplishing your goal without bringing shame into play.

What you've correctly intuited is that a five-year-old boy's interest in his mom's breasts is different in quality than a baby's or toddler's. That's probably why you're uncomfortable with it. Fours and fives tend be very sexualized. This doesn't mean they are lecherous or weird, just highly attuned to sexual differences and immensely curious. This curiosity usually targets the opposite-sex parent. They also try to engage in exploratory play with friends. There's a lot of giggling and pointing, and silly sexual talk. Setting limits as you have done honors your privacy and keeps him from getting overstimulated.

And it protects Rafe in other ways. Having these boundaries means he won't open himself up to a clueless admonishment or shaming comment. (This goes for self-exploration, very common at this age, as well as for touching others.) Over-worry about “stifling” or “shaming” a child can prevent parents from teaching appropriate public behavior. Then those same parents are aghast when Auntie Ruth or an appalled stranger says something really awful to their child. What a mess to have to clean up.

Furthermore, when you set personal boundaries you provide great modeling. Let's say Rafe doesn't like to have his head patted. Because he has been watching you, he will feel comfortable telling people so. He can do it politely but firmly. And because he can do this, he experiences a healthy ownership of his own body. I can't prove it, but I tend to think that giving a child this sense of self-stewardship helps to inoculate him against being exploited.

So keep on keepin' on! This too shall pass...Best, Susie

Post Script: the next day I received the following email from Rafe's mom. Their conversation was so amazing I will close with it, giving Rafe the last word:

Dear Susie...so today there was no “boob grabbing.” I told Rafe I appreciated that and asked him if it was confusing that when he was a baby and toddler he could have my boobs a lot for milkies, and now they had become private parts. He said very reasonably, "It might be confusing if I were a baby, but it's not now. I understand."