“Death lends urgency to our lives,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This was true even a generation ago Marni Gillard recalls being present at the wake of her grandmother in the living room of her home.Ī healthy awareness of death can help us better prioritize the rest of our lives. Throughout human history, most children had several intimate experiences with death before the age of twelve. Meanwhile, technologists are actively and enthusiastically seeking ways to live forever. Most people die in hospitals, and professionals have taken over much of the responsibility for preparing the body and organizing funeral rituals. We’re all going to die someday, but many kids grow into adulthood without ever having a first-hand experience of death. “It was one of the most powerful moments of my life.”Īnother good reason to take kids to a funeral is simply to expose them to the reality of death. “As we all stood around the open casket to pray before closing the casket, my then-four-year-old daughter, on her own accord, reached into the casket and held his hand as we all grabbed hands to pray the Our Father,” she says. His mom laughed, but I could see she’d done something to make it okay for him to be there, to see grampy’s open casket, and to feel he was part of it all.”Ĭarla Dobrovitz had a similarly positive-if more intense-experience with taking her children to the funeral of her two-year-old son who had died unexpectedly. “Then he went to get us both a candy from the dish. The boy took her to his grandmother and introduced the two.
“At a wake just yesterday, I noticed how HAPPY a little three-year-old boy was to say to me, ‘Want to come see my (living) grandma?’” says Marni Gillard, another member of the Teaching Catholic Kids parent group. It’s a real work of mercy, and one that kids-even infants and toddlers-can be very good at, just by being themselves. One reason for anyone to attend a funeral is to comfort the grieving. And leaving babies and toddlers home probably makes sense if you’re the caretaker, but you really need to focused on grieving a traumatic death.īut there are at least a couple good reasons to consider taking kids to funerals, both grounded in faith. Leaving kids home if they don’t want to attend a visitation service or funeral is probably for the best. She never ended up doing it, running out of the room screaming and crying.” Two good reasons to take kids to funerals “At fifty years old, she still talks about how awful that was. “My sister-in-law was traumatized when she was told to kiss her mother goodbye in the casket,” says Mary Gundrum. Several parents from the Teaching Catholic Kids parent group talked about the practice of forcing kids to kiss the deceased person. “If they want to” also applies to what happens at the wake or funeral itself. “On the other hand, children who were forced to attend a funeral may feel resentful.”Ĭhild bereavement specialist Helen Mackinnon, interviewed for an article in The Guardian, goes further, stating that Winston’s Wish, the charity she works for, finds time and again that older kids and adults often resent not having been allowed to attend the funerals of loved ones in some cases, she says, it extends or complicates the grief process: “It’s on this basis that you’ll be hard pushed to find any child bereavement expert who doesn’t think that, with adequate preparation, it’s OK for a child of any age to go to a funeral, if they want to.” “Children who are not allowed to attend a funeral may feel they didn’t get their chance to say goodbye,” advises the website of the Dougy Center, a national center for grieving children and families. On the other hand, if kids choose to attend the funeral, be sure to give them a heads up on what to expect.Ībove all, avoid forcing kids to attend or stay away. If they don’t want to go, why not? Younger kids in particular may have misconceptions about what will happen at the funeral.
But in fact, people who work in the field of child bereavement say that the best approach is to offer children and teens the choice of whether to attend or not-and then talk through that choice with them. One British survey found nearly half of people think it’s inappropriate to take children under the age of twelve to a funeral. The general feeling, though, was that there are good reasons to bring kids to funerals, despite the anxiety some parents might have about traumatizing their kids by exposing them to death. I asked a handful of parents about whether parents should take kids to funerals, and the answer was pretty unanimous: yes-with the usual caveats about each child and circumstance being unique.
Should you take your kids to the funeral? The nice neighbor across the street-the one who is always watching out for your kids-dies.
0 kommentar(er)
