The topic of this blog this week involving how children learn about death really inspired me since it was something that actually really applied to my life. I think I was around 6 or 7 year old when my cousin Tony (who was 14 at the time) fell off the back of a truck and had such severe brain damage that she passed away in the hospital. This was the first death I had ever experienced in my life. I remember wanting to cry at the funeral, but being too embarrassed to do so. I felt as though I didn't want people to think I was weak, or that this would make a huge impact on my life. The most vivid part of that day though was when one of my younger cousins who had to be 2 or 3 saw Tony and asked if she was sleeping. She also kept asking her mom why everyone was crying. Although, I was pretty young myself, that scared me so much that she didn't understand death.
Personally, I believe in Western society, a big way that kids learn about death is when they experience it. Whether it be with an animal or a family member. However, some children don't experience death until they're older, but they still understand it. I'm currently looking at a Hospice webpage for patients and families facing life-threatening illnesses. Apparently, it says that children who are aged born-3 don't understand death, but absorbs the emotions around them. From ages 3-6 a child believes that death is reversible. From 6 to 9 years old is when a child starts finally understanding death and how it is irreversible. Maybe I just don't remember what it's like to be a young child, but I feel as though I would have understood death by 5.
There was a psychological research done in China in a preschool. Researchers interviewed the children to see their views on death based on the comments they made and noticed 4 different patterns among the children: "causality, emotional reaction, death-related sociocultural practices and character status" (Wong 2010, pg. 63). This article also stresses how children in China recognize death as being irreversible by the age of about 5-6. This is pretty similar to the Western children. When the researchers asked the children about the causality of death, the children asked the researchers to read the tombs and then the kids would usually talk about the cause of death based on what they had seen in the media. Kids also talked about how they emotions they felt associated with death. Obviously, there were lots of emotions expressed about how sad someone was about people dying. The interesting thing I found in this article was that in the interviews the researchers asked the children if they were sad when someone they knew passed away and they said yes. When the researcher asked them if they cried, the children usually say no. They said that they felt uncomfortable crying at the funeral. This is interesting since it was exactly the same way I felt. However, the difference here was that the children expressed that when they did cry, their parents told them to leave the room or to stop crying. If I cried at my cousins funeral, everyone would have comforted me and accepted my tears. This could potentially be a cultural thing. Lastly, the children expressed how they understood their sociocultural practices. They knew that people left gifts for the deceased, but they weren't exactly sure why. This makes sense since the children may not yet understand the symbolism behind it.
So in conclusion, I feel as though there's a possibility in most cultures that most children start to understand death around the same age- ranging from 5-9. It's definitely interesting to see how people mourn their deceased differently. I feel as though there would not be too much research on this though just because it's just a sensitive subject for children. Nonetheless, it's a very interesting topic. It would be cool to look at how other countries experience death as well.
Bibliography:
Hospice [online] Available at: <http://www.hospicenet.org/index.html>.
Wong, M., 2010. Chinese children's understanding of death. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood 35 (2) Available through: Academic Search Complete database.
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