How do Kids Feel About the Prospect of Death?

Life Lessons From a Little Girl I Don’t Know at the Pool

Yesterday, when I was at the pool with my kids, a little girl swam over to play with my son and daughter. In talking to her and seeing how she acted towards my children, I could tell she was very self-aware and seemed to have a whole bunch of rules already in her head about how life should be lived. Then out of nowhere she asked the question,

“So has anyone in your family ever died?”

The wind was blowing, the water was splashing, and everyone around me was laughing. I waited.

Then my daughter shouted, with a smile on her face,

“No! Wait… yes! My daddy’s grandma died!”

I quickly retorted,

“Hey c’mon guys, that’s not a very nice thing to talk about.”

The new girl’s face bunched up in confusion. My daughter, still smiling, put her water mask back on and plunged into the shallow end. I kept asking myself, where the fuck are this little girls parents? Why are they letting her play with adults that they don’t know?

I stewed in this for a long time.

It wasn’t until about 18 hours later when I was getting ready for work the next morning, listening to a podcast of two comedians talking candidly about death, that I realized it was me who was in the wrong for scolding the children. Their minds hold the truth that there is no danger in death. There is sadness and longing regret and mourning for those that are left alive, but eventually death happens to everyone, just like birth.

When children really wrap their mind around it, I’m sure death scares them a little, but they have the presence of mind and the lack of mental baggage necessary to just move past those negative thoughts, realize that death is not fun to be scared of, so they stop feeling scared and just continue swimming.

The little girl was simply asking questions as kids do, and I was trying to teach her about using proper manners around conversations concerning death.

It is she who taught me.