Totally agree. For us, that was the primary value of preschool. Most of the other stuff she had already learned at home.
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I need this general kids thread to discuss my kid’s current fascination with memes. Something I didn’t think I would ever hear out loud was the sentence “do you want to hear this meme?”.
I’m sorry, hear this meme?
And now I guess she’s creating her own memes and is often making me look at them. Sometimes I have to produce faux laughter in response to said memes. Other times, she reads out all of the “witty” under meme comments to me and I don’t understand what’s funny or interesting about it and spontaneously combust internally.
Is this what the kids are really doing these days?
NB: today marks when Miss Kapowski officially outed herself as old.
Thirty, flirty, and thriving, imo.
RN
My mother keeps my daughter 2 days a week. She’s going to have to put down her cat this afternoon during naptime (someone will be there to watch here; not important to the question), but kiddo only knows the cat is sick and going to the doctor. How do you explain to a 2.5 y/o that the cat died? Do I even try to explain death at this point or just go the ‘she went to sleep’ route? Our dog died when she was 1, but I don’t think she even remembers. She’s significantly more functional at this point, so I might expect questions and to have to treat this like her first pet death.
Could defer and say the cat was so sick AND old that the doctor had to keep the cat. then explain later that the cat was so sick AND old that the cat died.
i stressed the AND because you don’t want your kid to start thinking either alone means death is imminent. Kids get sick and even have to go to the doctor - that isn’t real cause for stress. your mother is old (ancient to 2.5 yr olds) but not dying imminently, right?
good luck.
You should give your child the best veterinarian education you could buy. Else, you’re a bad parent.
I learned this from another poster.
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In my experience, be direct, even at that age. They will process what they can and store away what they don’t understand. You don’t have to go into great detail about what death is, but introducing the concept at that age isn’t going to scar them. They’ll forget and bring it up and you’ll have to explain it again, but I don’t believe one should lie or make up fairy tales about death. Just my two cents.
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agree.
also, do away with that whole santa claus nonsense too.
I mean, maybe it will scar them. But it’s scars every human being has. Death is something that every functional human being needs to understand. It sucks, but there it is.
Tell your kid that that the cat is very sick, and in pain, and near the end of its life, and that grandma is taking the cat away so it can die peacefully. Or something that’s the important part of the truth, in a way the kid can understand.
aren’t there some disney movies that deal with death? Soul comes to mind, thought i forget exactly how it dealt with it
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i’m in the MIN camp. They’ll be fine. Just keep em fed and clothed and make sure they don’t lose any limbs
Great movie too
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87% of all kids in books and movies are orphaned, usually violently… If you do teach her, you might? want to emphasize that pets die sometimes but people generally do not.
Anyway, my kid, I think just rolls with whatever you tell her. There’s no such thing as shocking when you have no baseline.
Thanks for the replies. They ended up not putting her down after all, trying some meds first (though based on how she looks…probably should have put her down). Still probably going to happen relatively soon though.
I recommend this book for teaching kids about death:
Disclaimer: I have not read this, do not actually endorse, but it’s fun to link to children’s books written by actuaries.
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I’m not sure what this means. Everyone dies. Unless you’re saying that most people are not going to die when they have to go to the doctor, which I agree is an important thing to emphasize.
We all die but pets die 5-20 times faster?
It’s too bad that most of concepts we use to excuse death are unavailable to toddlers.