Curve balls - any advice?

This booklet has some practical guidance on explaining death to under 5 year old children.  It describes some of the confusing (to a small child) things which adults are prone to saying around dying / death / bereavement / grief - and what to say / do instead to this age group:

https://seesaw.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/seesaw_under-fives-booklet_WEB2-1.pdf

I hope this might give you some new language and strategies to support your son understand what happens when people / pets die - using "concrete" literal language and pragmatic ways that trusted adults can connect with small children when they are learning about the concept and reality of people / pets dying.

How to avoid:

• society's historic scripted euphemisms around death which do not translate well into a small child's vocabulary and experience of life,
• the baffling imagery which can stem from cultural habits / taboos
• risking leading small children towards misunderstandings
• being left with more new questions than understood answers,
• erroneously thinking they need to follow up on information received with actions which are not available to them e.g. just how do they, themselves, visit someone / a pet, when they have heard adults say they "have gone to Heaven"?,
• how do they, as a child, find a way to ask an adult to understand that they are worried by everyone now seeming reluctant to talk about and celebrate someone / a pet who has died,
• why don't some adults now seem to remember (at the moment) that the dead person / pet were (and still are) an important part of the child's experience of life?,
• the child not understanding this weird adult pressure to suddenly talk less about someone / a pet - when you, as the child, know that you do still love them and want to continue to celebrate those memories by finding ways to talk about the loved person / pet,
• adults making it too confusing to be able to understand the likelihood and timeframe of potentially the other people / pets they love unexpectedly dying,
• our family (and other adults) observing and talking about death in a style of a community's conventions which overlook the consideration that small children can hear, observe and absorb everything...but often lack the real life references points by to make reassuring sense of what is going on around dying / death / bereavement / grief.

This booklet has some practical guidance on explaining death to under 5 year old children.  It describes some of the confusing (to a small child) things which adults are prone to saying around dying / death / bereavement / grief - and what to say / do instead to this age group:

https://seesaw.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/seesaw_under-fives-booklet_WEB2-1.pdf

I hope this might give you some new language and strategies to support your son understand what happens when people / pets die - using "concrete" literal language and pragmatic ways that trusted adults can connect with small children when they are learning about the concept and reality of people / pets dying.

How to avoid:

• society's historic scripted euphemisms around death which do not translate well into a small child's vocabulary and experience of life,
• the baffling imagery which can stem from cultural habits / taboos
• risking leading small children towards misunderstandings
• being left with more new questions than understood answers,
• erroneously thinking they need to follow up on information received with actions which are not available to them e.g. just how do they, themselves, visit someone / a pet, when they have heard adults say they "have gone to Heaven"?,
• how do they, as a child, find a way to ask an adult to understand that they are worried by everyone now seeming reluctant to talk about and celebrate someone / a pet who has died,
• why don't some adults now seem to remember (at the moment) that the dead person / pet were (and still are) an important part of the child's experience of life?,
• the child not understanding this weird adult pressure to suddenly talk less about someone / a pet - when you, as the child, know that you do still love them and want to continue to celebrate those memories by finding ways to talk about the loved person / pet,
• adults making it too confusing to be able to understand the likelihood and timeframe of potentially the other people / pets they love unexpectedly dying,
• our family (and other adults) observing and talking about death in a style of a community's conventions which overlook the consideration that small children can hear, observe and absorb everything...but often lack the real life references points by to make reassuring sense of what is going on around dying / death / bereavement / grief.