The Life Cycle of Flowers

It’s hard to talk about the idea of death with your kids, but lately it seems to come up all the time.  Like when we went to visit the 4YO’s chick and one of the others had recently expired and was lying conspicuously in the wood shavings.  Dinner always has the potential to trigger a morbid line of questioning.  So does absent-mindedly smacking at fruit flies. 

The kids don’t have a lot of personal experience with death, thank goodness, although they do ask about the cats from time to time, wondering if their absence really is a permanent condition. But I feel a responsibility to try to help them understand that death is a natural part of life, even if I barely have a true understanding of that myself. 

Recently, the 4YO was brooding over a flower he had picked that was wilting.  I explained that, although it was dying, it would drop its seeds to make more flowers as a way of living on.  I gathered from the expression on his face that this concept was way too abstract.  Then I told him we would bring the flower outside and lay it in the flowerbed and the stem and the leaves and the petals would turn back into dirt, which would help make a good spot for the new flowers to grow.  Nice try, Tammy, but nope, still not getting through.  He needed more concrete, practical answers.

Him: But…at the end of the world, it will die.

Me: Well, yes.  It will die.

Him: So what will we do?

Me: We will love it very much before it dies.

Him: And then, when it dies, we won’t love it anymore?

Me: No, no.  We will still love it.  We will definitely still love it.

Being a parent is hard.

Comments

[Amy]

No doubt. "As hard as it is, you end up wishing it were that easy." - Debra Winger, Terms of Endearment

[Robert]

Indeed. I think one of the tougher things about being a parent is trying to explain to your child things that you really don't understand yourself. They are so good at cutting through all the easy, convenient tropes we use to answer the difficult questions.
But, at the same time, their sense of wonder over things that seem mundane to adults makes up for all the hard questions.

[FoodieMommy]

Wow. As always you said it better than any of us. Ironically, spending lots of time in a garden and at farms with kids seems to bring this topic up more than I had ever, ever anticipated. I still haven't figured out the right answer on this one-esp. an answer that doesn't scare my kids! Hopefully they will just keep picking tomatoes.

[Cheryl S.]

I have not done wiell with this particular topic either. Unfortunately, my daughter (5 y/o) has lost 3 people. Both of my husband's parents and a beloved teacher. I tried to go with the heaven explanation -- The go to heaven to be with God and they're not sick or hurt any more. . . .Blah.

Now she tells everyone they are not allowed to go to heaven. Ask her why and she'll tell you that people that go to heaven never come back. :(