Dr. Robert Needlman
Specialist in pediatric behavior and development.
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 Ask Dr. Needlman
Five-Year-Old Worried about Death | | | QUESTION | | | Dear Dr. Needlman,
I have a five-year-old daughter that has spent the last two nights crying over what happened in New York and Washington. She believes that the same thing is going to happen to us, no matter how may times I tell her it won't. How do I deal with this? I really hate telling her it won't happen, because what if it does?— Tipp in Mississippi | | | ANSWER |
October 1, 2001 | | | Dear Tipp,
You are right to want to tell your daughter the truth. And the truth is you cannot guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen. What you can tell your daughter is that you are a very smart, very careful grownup, and that you always do everything to make sure that you will be alive and with her for a long, long time.
Five-year-olds often have questions about death; they may have figured out that everyone dies. This thought is scary because they do not yet have a sense of time as stretching forward for years and years. One way to address this is to tell her that yes, one day you will die, because everyone does eventually. But by the time that happens, she will be all grown up, perhaps with children of her own. For most young children, the time when they will be grown up (and thus, the time when you will die) seems unimaginably distant.
Even with this reassurance, as you are finding out, the fears can return again and again, and reassurance has to be given many times. Nights, of course, are worse, because that is when children naturally have to separate from their parents. Some young children are finding comfort sleeping in their parents' room temporarily.
You may be able to use non-spoken ways to give your daughter the comfort she needs. She might want to carry a small photograph of you with her, or keep it by her bed to remind her that you are alive and well. At bedtime, you might include a comforting poem, prayer, or song that you say together. If you do this every night, it will become part of your child's storehouse of comforting images and memories, something she can turn to when doubts and fears surface, as they are likely to do over the next many weeks and months.— by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. |
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