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LIBRARY

Michigan State
University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

A TIME FOR ALL SEASONS

presented by

Ella Lou Ruggles

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Master degree in Art
Telecommunication

Majo: professor

Date July 30, 1980

 

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PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove We checkom from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or More date due.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSU Ie An Afflrmetive MiavKuel Opportunity lnetituion
Walla-9.1

 

A TIME FOR ALL SEASONS

By
Ella Lou Ruggles

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Telecommunication

nm\o\\s

ABSTRACT

A TIME FOR ALL SEASONS

by
Ella Lou Ruggles

As the song relates there is "a time to be born and a
time to die." This natural phenomenon,however, is feared by
many adults; their anxieties are consequently transferred to
their children.

Chapter 1 shows that our "death-denying" society
there is a need for better communication.

Chapter 2 relates how important communication is bet-
ween parents and children concerning death.

Chapter 3 traces stages of child development and
abilities to conceptualize death.

Chapter 4 presents methods of discussing death with
children.

Chapter 5 describes the development of A Time for All
Seasons.

Chapter 6 discusses the results and concludes: 1) the
product, A Time for All Seasons, is an excellent vehicle
for showing how professionals, parents and children deal

with death. 2} That children (4-6) are indeed aware of

death and participate effectively in a video production
concerning the topic death.
Videotape is on file with the Department of Telecom-

munication, Michigan State University.

Accepted by the faculty of the Department of
Telecommunication, College of Communication Arts and
Sciences, Michigan State University, in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts

degree.

 

Director of Thesis

TO MY PARENTS,

AND SUZIE AND WESLEY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Susan Anderson,
for her assistance in typing my thesis and the assembling of my
cast for the video tape. At this time I would also like to thank
Donny Anderson, Pat Barrett, Mary Jane Childress, Jack Crosby,

Dr. J. Claude Evans, Howard Miller, M.D., and Carol Watkins for
their information and assistance in this project, along with

the participating children, Shana Anderson, Kristi Anderson,

Todd Barner, Jennifer Barrett, Stephanie Barrett, Bunny Childress,
Chris Cullum, Rhett Crosby, Betsy Green, Kristi Moore, David Reck,
Brianna Thomas, Courtney Watkins , Sam Williams, and their very

patient mothers.

ii

PREFACE

There has been little exploration on the subject of
children and their understanding of death for parents. A
review of television programs established that there was
little use of television to provide information in this
area. Although research has established that television
can be an effective teaching tool little has been done to
provide parents or teachers with information in this area.

The purpose of this thesis project was to discuss
children's attitudes about death, different explanations
that are offered children; the way death should be explain-
ed, and a pilot television program designed to help parents
see that even at very early ages children start developing
ideas of what death is.

Many volumes have been written on the meaning of death.
Many authors have attempted to describe the ways in which
man learns about death and tries to cope with this univer-
sal phenomenon. Most of the recent literature on death,
or those attempting to cope with the loss of people close
to them. These works focus on adults for the most part
and adult literature on death and dying is simply not

relevant to children in most cases.

iii

Physicians, theologicans, educators, and psychologists
are often called upon for advice about how best to explain
death to children, and many have taken up the challenge through
books and magazine articles. But for all of the writing that
has been done in this area, however, there is embarrassingly
little in the way of empirical research. That is to say, few
of these authors have taken the time to talk with children about
death, and to report the children's answers. Whatever the reason
for this state of affairs, the lack of empirical data in this
area leaves a significant void. Virtually all professionals
who work with children are aware of the need for accurate in-
formation on how children's ideas about death develop. Parents
many times, for a number of different reasons, seem to put aside
the subject of death with their children, but children are still
formulating their own ideas. Parents should be made aware of
the fact that they can not stop their children from becoming
aware of death.

The purpose of this thesis project was to develop a
pilot television program designed to help parents through em-
pirical application. The goal of the pilot program was two-
fold. First it is to show parents that even at an early age,
children have started to form ideas about death. Second, it
was to serve as a tool to enable parents to discuss the topic
of death with their children.

This thesis project, therefore, consists of: a video
tape of a half-hour program, information on the development of
children's understanding of death, and explanation of how to

explain death to children.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION .

ACKNOWL
PREFACE

EDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.

APPENDI

SELECTE

A NEED FOR UNDERSTANDING IN A CHANGING
SOCIETY . . .

TALKING WITH CHILDREN ABOUT DEATH .
DEVELOPMENT OF A CONCEPT ABOUT DEATH
EXPLAINING DEATH TO CHILDREN .
PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

X . . . .
APPENDIX 1- RELEASE FORMS USED .

APPENDIX 2-SIGNED RELEASE FORMS
APPENDIX 3-TYPE OF EQUIPMENT USED .
APPENDIX 4-QUESTIONS FOR THE CHILDREN

APPENDIX 5- -QUESTIONS USED FOR ALL THE ADULT
INTERVIEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . .

APPENDIX 6-LIST OF CUT—A-wAY SHOTS NEEDED .
APPENDIX 7-SCENES TO BE SHOT AT REMOTE SITE
APPENDIX 8-OUTLINE OF PROGRAM .

APPENDIX 9- DR. MILLER S TRANSCRIPTION a
QUESTIONS . . . . . . . . . . .

APPENDIX 10-SUGGESTED BOOKS AND AUDIOVISUAL
PROGRAMS ON THE TOPIC OF DEATH. . . .

D BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Page

ii

iii

13
27
43
S6
65

69
70

93

95

97
99
101
103

105

109

INTRODUCTION

When you die, you're dead.

Try saying that word, DEAD.

It is a hard word to say, isn't it?
Not hard to pronounce, really,
but hard to make yourself say.

Maybe because it's a sad word

even a little frightening.

Let's say it again:
DEAD.
Now, let's say another word:
DIE.
That's what happened to grandfather.
Grandfather died.
He is dead.
It is not like playing cowboys and Indians.
"Bang! I shot you. You are dead!"
And then you start all over again
and play another game.
DEAD IS DEAD.
It is not a game. It is very real.
Grandfather is gone. 1
He will never come back.

Well meaning adults are tempted to shield young child-
ren from an awareness of death. Yet an overview of child devel-
opment suggests that the discovery of loss begins during in-
fancy. One of the more difficult tasks confronting a parent
is explaining the nature of death to children. Fears and anx-
ieties can easily develop either through inappropriate death
education or as a result of no education. Thanatologyists
generally agree that death education for children when develop-
mentally appropriate helps reduce fear and anxieties about
death and dying.

Television is being used more and more as a learn-

ing tool for both children and adults therefore it is not
unusual to use the media of television to try and help
parents understand what a child's concept of death is and
how parents can approach the topic of dying in such a way
as to eliminate many misconceptions concerning death.

Most modern parents are convinced by the teaching of
mental hygiene that they should be honest in discussing the
biological processes of birth. But when it comes to life's
end, they fall strangely silent.

Of course, it's not really strange. In other eras
death was an integral part of life. Old people (and young
people, too) died at home surrounded by friends and family.
Rural inhabitants were closer to nature where they were
regularly confronted with death in plants and animals.
Religious beliefs, which once could offer tota1--or near
total-~solace, have been noticably shaken. The word

D-E-A-D has become the new four-letter-word of pornography.

Chapter I
A Need for Understanding In a Changing Society
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies
but not everyone lives.
A. Sachs
Thanatology, the study of death and the process of
dying, has been a subject of man's concern since the begin-
ning of his existence. During the past 20 years, journals
in medicine and mental health have carried articles report-
ing research findings and clinical observations on various
aspects of the subject.
A new level of interest in thanatology began in the
late 1960's with the publication of two books, one edited by
Toynbee2 and another by Kubler—Rosss, which drew the atten-
tion of scholars and public alike. Kubler-Ross followed with
an article in 19724 and a second book in 19745 and is today
the most-often quoted authority on the subject.
These writings have drawn the attention of educators
to the need for the preparation of children for the recogni-
tion and acceptance of death-~their own and that of loved ones.
Sensitive questions often arise about the beginning and
the ending of life. Many contemporary parents talk openly
with their children about sexuality, childbirth, and the

biologic processes attending the beginning of life, but have

4
difficulty in discussing the end of the life cycle.

(hueexplanation is that today's families live in a
death-denying society. Memorial services take the place of
funerals; peOple pass away; flowers wither or fade. Real
experiences with death have been taken out of the home, to
be replaced with violent death as portrayed on television.

For example, a two-year-old discovered discarded flowers in
the trash and asked his mother why they. were there. When his
mother replied that they were dead he in reponse might want

to know, "Who shot them?"

Contemporary American Society denies death. 80 many
knowledgeable writers have expressed this viewpoint that it
hardly seems necessary to document it. American Society has
been labeled as death-denying, death-defying , death-frightened,
death-misunderstanding; further it has been said that the
American view of death is absurb and insane. America now has
the world's first death-free generation, meaning that it is
now possible for a child to grow into adulthood in the United
States and not experience a personal or emotional death at
anytime in his minority. At first glance this may seem to
be an advantage; in the long term it proves to be a disadvant-
age because it conflicts with realtiy and eventually collide
with reality. Sound exposure and experiences at a: younger
age helps to set a stable coping pattern for later' experiences.

Throughout world history and in most parts of the
world today, aging, illness, and death have been and continue

to be daily experiences of living which are shared by all

5

members of the family and community from the very young to
the very old. Aging, illness, and death are seldom daily
experiences of living in contemporary America. The uniqueness
of America in this regard is characterized by many trends such
as a strong youth culture which sets many moral and ethical
standards and is copied by older populations; a trend to
use devices to conceal aging; a trend toward retirement cities,
retirement geographical region; a trend toward senior citizen
clubs, centers, and buildings; a trend toward geriatric wards
in hospitals; a trend towards having nursing homes to care
for the old people; a trend in the clothing industry to assist
in the denial of aging; a trend in the mass media system to
portray death as tragic, horrible, unlawful, unwanted; a
trend toward the cryonic suspension of bodies rather than
decay; a trend in the medical profession to thwart death with
great heroic efforts; a trend for hospitals to deny that death
occurs in the institution as exhibited by the cadaver stretch-
ers which appear to convey the dead to the morgue euphemisti-
cally concealed below a tray of neatly folded and stacked
linens. The examples could go on and on. Summarily, death
in contemporary America, can be summarized as being less child-
centered, less family-centered, less love-centered, less com-
munity-centered, and more stranger-centered. Death is now the
stranger in the night.

The following statement by Berg and Daugherty epitom-

ize this succinctly:

6

Not too many years ago, dying and death were
very much a natural part of the total family
life cycle. Families lived together, often
with several generations in the same house-
hold. The dying process took place within
the family circle as did the death itself and
the funeral in many cases. Young people were
thus enabled to view the process of dying,
part of the total life cycle.

This is not true today, because these processes
are typically removed from the family experience.
In many instances, the act of dying has lost its
dignity and normalcy and has become institutional-
ized, dehumanized, and mechanized-~and young
people have been excluded from the experience a1-
together. The resulting void of experience must
be filled if society is to return a proper per—
spective toward the value of life.6
That America is a rapidly changing and fast moving soci-

7speaks of the over-stimulated individ-

ety is certain. Toffer
ual, the odds against love, Monday-to-Friday friends, weekend
defectors, fun specialists, and style-setters. Packard8 de-
scribes America with terms such as company gypsies, three-shift
towns, spill-over cities, modern nomads, transients,1005€1y-
rooted people, high mobiles and community demoralization.
Feidel holds that death has become a "wall" rather than a "door".
Death is seen as a loss of identity and extinction because of
the waning of traditional belief in personal immorality and the
potential for redemption. Further undercutting our capacity to
intergrate personal death is the impoverishment of our communal
relationship by which we girdle death in a technologically
dominated society, with its increasing fragmentation of the
family, growing impersonality, and deritualization of grief and

mourning practices. In a society that emphasizes the future

the prospect of no future at all is an abomination. Hence,

7
death invites our hostility and denial, and expression of
grief is slighted,9 not only in adults but often in children.
Children are ignored or shielded from the knowledge of the
death of a person, in far too many cases. Psychological
studies have shown that children should be given full opport—
unity to express their grief.

Young children view their parents as all-powerful,
all-knowing beings who can do anything and everything. They
accept whatever their parents tell them without question.
Parental "truths" become permanently etched in their minds.

To tell children half truths or fairy tales about death with
the intent of protecting them may, in fact, do them permanent
injustice. It is much more advisable to tell them the truth,
even though at the same time they may not comprehend but will
later have to unlearn. If children are to be helped, we should
tell them things that are rational and helpful.

Albert Camus said that "Men cannot live without mean-
ing." We could also say that of children, too. We can go on
to say that "meaningf'the answer to "emptinessfl'is found be-
yond the fact of death. We cannot protect ourselves from
death so we cannot protect children from it. The traumatic
experiences of life belong to both adulthood and childhood.
Tragedy is the gift to all.

What is new in our day is the attention given to
understanding the emotional needs of children. PeOple are
beginning to see children as human beings. Only an individual

psychologically uninformed could say of a child who encountered

8
tragedy and who had become silent and passive, "he is taking
it very well. He never cries.”

Children like adults, differ widely in their reactions
to death. It is best, if possible, to bring the news of a
death to a family member individually. This makes it possible
to choose the words and to communicate in a mood and manner
that best fits each person. It also allows each person to re-
act initially in his own way without the need to modify his re-
action for the sake of others.

Sharing the news of a death with children is the be-
ginning,rather than the end, of the process of sharing under-
standing. It is the first of a number of exchanges of what
happened to Grandpa and what it means. In talking with child-
ren about death it is not possible to anticipate the precise
words to use. Whatever the specific words, we can be helpful
to children if we gear our language to the way the individual
child views or understands death.

Fear of death is not only a cultural phenomenon but
a part of being human. The knownness of life and the unknow-
ness of death, the termination of the natural joys of living,
the conclusion of the relatively controllable activity of
life all create a pervasive dread of death touching every man.

Since no mortal has ever pierced the veil of mystery
surrounding death, the teacher and particularly the parent are
frightened at the thought of finality. Perhaps for this
reason many adults try in every way to keep from children the

idea of death. Parents wish to protect their offspring. Often

9
because of their own anxieties, they rationalize by saying:
"The youngsters are really too little to understand." Yet,
the parents who try to hide their grief for the sake of their
youngsters are rarely able to do so effectively. The gap be-
tween what the adults say and do and the underlying feeling
that children sense is likely to cause more confusion and dis-
tess than if the parents tell the child the truth.

.Sometimes adults try to spare children the necessity
of facing tragic circumstances. When there is a difference of
opinion among adults in the family, they try to settle the
matter without letting the children overhear the argument.
When there is a financial crisis, they try to resolve the
problem without worrying the child. When a neighborhood crisis
develops, they seek to cope with it without letting the child
become aware of it. When serious illness develops, they are
apt to play it down as far as the youngsters are concerned.
This protective attitude toward children's sensibilities is
quite natural in traits of adults, and wisely so, for it is
difficult to expect children to think or act like adults.

If children do not find a real explanation to fit what
they sense or overhear, they may let their imaginations run
wild. They may assume that Daddy doesn't love Mother anymore.
This would be a much more distrubing thing to cope with than
the simple fact that there is a difference of opinion. They
may even assume that they are to blame for changes in attitudes
in the family, and this can threaten their security when it is

important.

10

Insofar as the tragic circumstances of death are a
part of the emotional experience of life, it is difficult to
exclude children completely from some awareness of them. Be-
cause children are particularly sensitive to changes in the
emotional climate, they tend to be aware of things in general
even if they do not understand things in particular. When
change occurs, they are apt to be quick to sense it.

Death confronts us and our children in many ways.
There are no simple, standard rules we can call on to help
young people understand and cope with death except the prin-
ciple of keeping the lines of communication open within the
family and the community.

Learning to accept death is a natural experience in
life which must not be ignored. Most importantly a child
should not only be exposed to death, but also be prepared
for and guided through the period of loss.

Surprisingly, the "protective philosophy" with regard
to children's knowledge of death is a current trend stemming
fromcnxrdeath-denying culture. Parents often isolate children
from the pain of growing old. They remove grandma or grandpa
to a nursing home or hospital. Worse, when death occurs, the
child is assigned to a baby-sitter while everyone else parti-
cipates in the funeral. Allowing the child to bea part of
the ceremonies and even the conversation, helps relieve his
fear of the rest of his world crumbling.

Mystery also may be avoided by proper explanation

of death. Each time a child inquires and is denied sufficient

11
response he delves into his own memory bank to create the
answer. The longer such mysteries persist, the more difficult
they are to correct.

Children may experience adverse emotional reactions.
They may become angry hoping their tantrums will restore
normalcy.. They may neglect playing and eating because of
their guilt5~not realizing their actions had nothing to do
with death. These reactions are quite normal, but continuation
indicates maladjustment.

Honesty should form death discussion with children as
in all "life-forming" subjects. Since the purpose is to re-
duce fear and induce trust, all information should be factual.

Simplicity is also vital. Too much information clouds
a developing mind when the child is exposed to new language

and ideas.

Chapter I
REFERENCES

1Earl A. Grollman, Talking About Death (BostonzBeacon
Press, 1970), pp. 8-9.

 

2A. Toynbee, et el. (eds), Man's Concern With Death
(New York: McGraw Hill Co., 1969).

 

3Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York:
MacMillian Co.,1969).

 

4 . . .
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, ”The Searchlng Mind," Today's
Education 61 (1972): 30-32.

 

5Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Questions And Answers On Death
And Dying (New York: McMillian Co., 1974).

 

 

6David W. Berg and G. S. Daugherty "Teaching About Death,"
Today's Education 62 (1973):46.

 

7Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House,

 

1970).

8Vance Packard, A Nation of Strangers (New York: David
McKay Company, Inc., 1972).

 

9Herman Feifel, "Attitudes Toward Death" A Psychological
Perspective." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 33
(1969).

 

Chapter II
Talking With Children About Death

Many volumes have been written on the meaning of death
and its psychological concomitants. Many authors have attempt-
ed to describe the ways in which man learns about death and
tries to cope with this universal phenomenon. Most of the
recent literature on death and dying tends to focus on those
confronting their own death, or those attempting to cope with
the loss of people close to them. Most works focus on adults
and are thus subject to a common fallacy that goes something
like, "Children look like grown-up people only smaller; there-
fore they probably think like grown-up people only smaller;
therefore they probably think like grown-ups about most things."
In fact just the opposite is true. Children are far from be-
ing miniature adults when it comes to the quality of their
thought processess. The adult literature on death and dying
is not relevant to a child, in most cases.

Physicians, theologians, educators, and psychologists
are often called upon for advice about how best to explain
death to children, and many have written books and magazine
articles. But for all of the writing thats been done very
few of these authors have taken the time to talk with children

about death.

14

Many parents want to shield children and young people
from a knowledge of or experience with death. Yet, of the
adventure into life is the understanding of death.

Kastenbaum, one of the current authorities on death
and dying wrote:

'The Kingdom where nobody dies,‘ as Edna St. Vincent

Millay once described childhood, is the fantasy of

grownups. We can be more useful to children if we

can share with them realities as well as fantasies
about death. This means some uncomfortable moments.

Part of each child's adventure into life is his dis-

covery of loss, separation, nobeing, death. No one

can have this adventure for him, nor can death be 1

locked in another room until a child comes of age.

A child is entitled to this phase of education. Death
education is preparation for living.2 An adequate understand-
ing of death is inseparably bound up with the nature and pur-
pose of life.

Some basic principles that need to be kept in mind are
to answer questions about death truthfully, simply, and direct-
ly. To aboid denying the child's perception or reaction to
death. As much as possible, introduce children to the con-
cepts of death in an objective, simple, nonpersonal situation.
To present children with a discriminating concept of death
and to use ceremonial events surrounding death as a thera-
peutic learning experience.

You should first try to discover exactly what the child
is asking or is interested in knowing. Whan a young child
asks, "What will happen if Mommy dies?", he may be wanting to

know "Who will take care of m?" Responding to such an in

quiry by asking, "What do you think?", this may give the child

15
the Opportunity to clarify his own concerns. Explanations
about death and circumstances surrounding family grief should
be simple and nonperplexing. For example, explanations such
as "Grandmother has gone on a long trip" or "To die is to
sleep" may be confusing for very small children, and will have
to be clarified for those who are older.

Childhood experience with death can affect a whole life.
It can influence career, world outlook, even the choice of a
mate. The world can become a totally different place once
life's profoundest uncertainty is thrust upon a child.

Aunt Kathy said he was sent up to heaven, but I know

my daddy got kilt. Kilt on the road in a car. Squish-

up squirrels got kilt on the road and they didn't look

like they were sleeping. I ran away from seeing the

squirrel that time with all the blood and the tongue

out. And anyhow, if God is so good, how come he let

my daddy get kilt and squished like that?

-Bernard, age 11

Rather than comfort a child, euphemisms deepen the fear and
confusion.

"When will Mommy wake up"? one six year old wanted to
know of his "sleeping" mother. "How come she's not in bed?"
A four year old girl became obsessed that her father was
watching her from heaven. Another girl clung tenaciously to
the ties she had brought her father for Christmas. If he had
just ”gone away", surely he would be back in time to put up
the tree.

"You must use the word dead, and you must respect a

child's desire to understand and participate in what's happen-

ed." said Dr. Yehuda Nir, Director of Child Psychiatry at

16
Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York. Dr. Nir said
that talking it out helps, that children should be encouraged
to ask questions and should get specific, honest answers.

Many parents turn first to religious answers. But
explaining to a child that God called her Mommy can foster the
image of a cruel and vengeful deity. Sally, six, brought a
note home from her teacher in parochial school saying that she
refused to pray with the other children after her mother died.
Sally's explanation: "If I don't talk to God, he won't know
I'm here, and he can't call me away like Mommy." Such confus-
ion can be offset with more soothing details. God is good,
but sometimes we can't understand everything He does.

Explanations of death should never be cryptic, should
resolve questions, not create them. "Because she was sick,"
can create panic when any kind of sickness developes.

Dr. Nir advises a sensible antidote: Explain special
sickness. Their dying was unusual. Nobody killed them, not
the doctors or hospital staff. People get sick all the time
and they nearly always get well. This time the sickness was
just too strong.

Whatever the circumstances it is important that the
child discuss death until his or her ambiguities are resolved.
The subject should not be skirted. Family protectiveness
tries to spare children from the sadness but honesty should be
the rule.

"A child must be given the freedom to negoitate his

own feeling towards the death," Dr. Nir said. "And above all,

17

he or she must be allowed to participate in the mourning pro-
cess.”

They left me with a housekeeper and told me to play.

Everyone was dressed up and very quiet, and they all

went away together in a big black car. Lots of people

came back to the apartment and made a fuss over me, but

I wasn't sure why and I sure couldn't play. I thought

play. I thought maybe they would bring Mommy back with

them. I asked, but Daddy cried and went to the bathroom.

For a long time after that nobody would even say Mommy's

name, and all her clothes were gone. My grandmother took

away all her pictures off the piano, too.

-Robert, 10

Children should attend funerals, or at least be given the option.
The finality of a burial is essential, and real. If it'Spresent-
ed not as a horror, but as a chance to say a last affectionate
goodbye, it can help heal a child. In the 50's and 60's many
adults felt otherwise.

Never assume children will simply forget the pain of
bereavement. Watch for reactions, immediate or delayed. Ask
them how they feel about death, the deceased, and themselves.

I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke
all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the
hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on
the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was
already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't
do it. It was a very stupid thing to do. I'll admit,
but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you
didn't know, Allie.

-J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"

What does a child feel at such moments? Anger? Aband-
donment?Guilt?Ch'all of them, bound in a tangle of emotions
that takes years to sort out? When one boy's mother was kill-

ed in a car accident, he blamed his father for making her go

someplace alone. Children whose relatives are killed in a

18
violent crime may have anger tantrums and strike out at any-
thing, they cannot get at the one who caused their misery.

The universal emotion seems to be fear. It can be
terrifying for a child to see his strong, capable parents
immobilized with grief. Yet, it is baffling for a child who
feels tremendous grief to be around adults who conceal their
feelings. A parent should be able to grieve openly, though
not hysterically, reassuring the child that it is all right
for everyone to feel sad.

Excessive worry over the surviving parent is common,
especially when the death was the result of a violent crime.
Susan Swanson, a social worker at the Karen Horney Clinic in
New York, counsels with children who have lost relatives by
murder.

"Suddenly, every stranger begins to look like a crim-
inal to them, " she said. "Mommy shouldn't go outside, should-
n't walk to the store alone." A child may begin sliding his
baseball bat beneath the covers at night, compulsively mak-
ing sure that windows are closed and doors are locked. He
may not want to go out and play with his friends anymore,
feeling compelled to stay at home and keep watch. He may
also change the games he plays.

I got weird about which games I would play. My brother
was hit by a car and killed--what's the word?--instantly.
And, after that, all of a sudden I couldn't play cow-
boys and Indians, or Batman and the crooks. The other
kids would get mad at me when I didn't fall down after
they pretend--shot me, but I think I was afraid that if

I fell down like that I really might be dead. Boom.

Like my brother.

-Lonnie, 12

19

Often a child's innermost fears about death will
surface in play habits. In his book, Mommy, Daddy, I'M
Afraid, Stephen M. Joseph writes: "Society does not allow
children to talk about death. But they are allowed to play
games which dramatize it, and they do, over and over again."

Some researchers (Jackson 1965; Zebigs, 1974; Cook,
1973; and Kilman 1968) claim to have duplicated Nagy's find-
ings, and consequently support the universal application of
Nagy's model to children of all cultures. They argue that
there is a difference between an adult view of death and that
of a child, and that these differences between an adult view
of death and that of a child can be attributed to age and
maturity. Other scholars (Grollman, 1967; Morrissey, 1965;
Rochlin, 1967; McIntire et al., 1972) however, report that
their data contradict part, if not all, of Nagy's model.
Their data can be interpreted as support for conceptual-
izations that contradict the age-graded, developmental model
and emphasize other variables (for example, social and cul-
tural background and experiences) over age.

Some scholars have questioned the university and
universal application of Nagy's finding to children of all
cultures, pointing out that her analysis was based on the
study of postwar Hungarian children. Grollman (1967), for
example, suggests that future investigators consider the role
of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds in children's
concepts of death and dying. The research of McIntire,

Angle, and Struempler (1972); Rochlin (1967); and Schilder

20
and Wechsler (1934) bears out Grollman's concern.

McIntire et al. (1972) found that unlike Hungarian
children, American children tend to "cast aside fantasy" and
focus on "organic decomposition" as early as age five and in
some cases as early as age three.

I have had broad experiences observing person's struggle
at the time of the death experience to conceal feelings and
to "be strong". Partly because there is a sense of embarrass-
ment by friends at the expression of real feelings and partly
by a mistaken notion that expression of sorrow feelings is
a weakness, there is an effort on the part of the griever, at
the expense of immense psychic energy, to not show emotions
that are thought to be negative. In our exuberance and diligence
to achieve "the good life" in the fulfillment of the American
dream, we have lost sight of the fact that sadness and its
expression is an intergral part of the human experience and
that there are appropriate ways to express sadness which are
just as acceptable in human behavior as the expression of
happiness.

Human beings are vested in emotion. A full range of
emotions are received in daily life and give life balance.
That balance is perverted when we deny the existence and/or
experience of sorrow. It is unnatural.txn share happiness
with someone and not share sadness. Some try to intellectual-
ize grief. Why don't they also try to intellectualize happi-
ness as a pleasant, wanted, "positive" emotion and sadness is

an un leasant unwanted and "ne ative" emotion. We want '0 ;
9 9

21
we don't want grief. We seek happiness; we deny sadness. We
would do well to accept the fact that both are legitimate human
responses to experience and both deserve our full acceptance
and expression.

Apparently what many people do not realize is that when
expression of emotion is repressed, it does not go away, but
continuesto live and fester within the self and eventually will
force an expression in some manner. Unresolved grief will
frequently manifest itself in a destructive way in the grieved
person through irritabilty, hostility, chronic sadness, re-
jection of others, and even in physical illness as shown above.
In astudy of fifty families with schiZOphrenic members and
twenty-five families with at least one neurotic member, Paul
and Grosser3 reported that all of these families had one feature
in common: maladaptive response to object-loss. Switzer4 con-
cludes that successful working through of the anxiety of grief
at the appropriate time is very important in contribuing to
the later stability of the closest possible personal relation-
ships, those within the family.

Some interesting work has been reported indicating
that extreme delinquent behavior in juveniles may be, in part,

5 found

the result of pathological mourning. Shoor and Speed
that the death of a significant family member was the common
denominator in a group of fourteen adolescents in a juvenile
probation department in California. When they had achieved

a mourning process in some of the juveniles, the delinquent

behavior improved. Gorer6 concluded in his study of bereaved

22
persons in Britain that because youth are either refused the
right to mourn or refused to do so because of social stigma,
they are more apt to exhibit hostile and aggressive behavior
which may manifest itself in acts of violence, vandalism, etc.

Suppressed and submerged sadness will exhibit itself.
Emotions ventilate themselves either honestly or dishonestly,
either naturally or unnaturally, either positively or negative-
ly, either progressively or regressively, either appropriately
or inappropriately. The expense of emotional denial and sup-
pression is in terms of physical health, mental health, com-
patability with others, and comfort with the self. Emotions
are dynamic, not static, and deserve EH1 honest and honorable
place in our lives.

Ritualized and prescribed social behavioral patterns
offer stability to individual behavior. Whether it be in
routine daily rituals such as bedtime rituals, work rituals,
play rituals, or whether it be in crisis rituals such as births,
first communions, baptisms, marriages, deaths, the element of
sanctioned repetition in expected behavior offers security of
the self. This is particularly true when the security to one's
sense of stability has been threatened. AnthrOpologist Margaret
Mead states,

Highly stylized activities . . . are an essential part

of the whole . . . . Improvisation is possible because
it can be done within a known and valued frame . . .
Ritual, a repetition of recognized forms of expression,
cannot be relegated to the past--to antiquity, to barb-
arism, or to the life of early man. Ritual is an exceed-
ingly important part of all culture . . . we Americans

believe thatritual is a bad word . . . Ritualistic
means empty, formal soulless, when applied as an adjective.

23

And our odd definition of ritual as bad prompts an
intolerance of all repetition . . . . One ability
that man lacks - - - . . . is the ability to invent
continually something entirely new. Real innovation
is rare and inexpressibly precious, set as it always
is within a rich and productive legacy from the past,
or a shared view of the present or the furture. And
if the greatly original artist has to create the kind
of tradition on which other artists are able to draw,
too much energy goes into creating such forms. End-
less (and inevitably mediocre) innovation is far
more stereotyped than traditional form . . . . A good
ritual is very much like a natural language. The im-
portant thing about a natural language . . . is that
it has been spoken for a very long time by very many
kinds of people . . . . It has become a language
that everyone can speak and everyone can learn, a
language that carries overtones of very old meanings
and the possibilities of new meanings. I think we
can describe ritual in exactly the same way. It

must be old, otherwise it cannot reflect the play

of many men's imaginations. It must be old, other-
wise it will not be fully available to everyone born
within that tradition. Yet it also must be alive and
fresh, open to new vision and changed vision . . .
The essence of ritual is the ability of the known
form to reinvoke past emotion, to bind the individual
to his own past experience, and to bring the members
of the group together in a shared experience.

Parkes summarizes:
In sum, here were a group of unstable young women
who were unprepared for bereavement, members of a
society of a generation, which has largely abandoned
both the formal expression of mourning and belief in
the efficacy of ritual. They came from families which
either actively discouraged the open expression of
negative feelings or were to widely disperse that
they conveyed no expectations at all. Urgent life
tasks and the conviction that one must not 'break
down' in front of the children also seem to have
contributed to cause these widows to restrain ex-
pression of their grief.3

One of the indicators that the reaction to bereavement
may take a pathological course is a delay in the onset of grief
of more than two weeks duration.9 Parkes refers to the two
week period in several places in his text. He further states

that the two features of intense separation anxiety and strong

24

but only partially successful attempts to aviod grieving
were evident in all the forms of atypical grief which he has
found.10

Peretz states that one of the basic defense mechanisms
to unpleasantness is repession. It is an unconscious rid—
dance phenomenon. A bereaved person may say that the wish or
the feeling exists but that he is not responsible for it and
that it does not belong to him. The bereaved may express his
feelings as an idea, but isolates its emotional content. While
the person will acknowledge missing the deceased, he expresses
this in an aloof and unemotional manner. Another mechanism
may be that of denying the reality or possibility of loss.
The person who needs to deny that a loss has occurred main-
tains his denial by avoiding scenes and settings that remind
him of the lost object . .11

The point seems to be clear. Grief is a condition which
can be cleansing and beautifying or it can be devastating and
destructive. Mismanaged grief jeopardizes physical health,
mental health, and social behavior. It is also clear that the
American society is changing and is beginning to embrace all
of the component trends which will allow it to become the type
of society which will reach out for immediate disposal of the
dead. The denial of death is heightening. The traditional
funeral is expensive and largely misunderstood. The disposal
movement allows avoidance and an escape mechanism to stress.

As a result of these factors, it is my fear that the prognosis

is poor in terms of the way Americans will observe deaths and

25

the consequent aberrant behavior because of maladaptive grief.

Chapter II

REFERENCES

1Robert Kastenbaum, "The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies,"
Saturday Review, December 23, 1972, p. 38.

 

2John W. McClure, "Death Education, Phi Delta Kappa
55 (1974),:485.

3Norman L. Paul and George H. Grosser, "Operational
Mourning," Community Mental Health Journal, I (1965): 114.

4David K. Switzer, The Dynamics of Grief (Nashville
Abingdon Press, 1970) p. 189.

 

SMervin Shoor and Mary H. Speed, "Death, Delinquency
and the Mourning Process," Psychiatry Quarterly 36(1963),:S40-SS8.

6Geoffry Gorer, Death, Grief and Mourning (London: The
Cresset Press, 1965) pp.ll4-115.

7Margaret Mead, Twentieth Century Faith, Hope and Sur-
vial (New York: Harper 8 Row, 1962), pp. 124-I27.

8Colin Murray Parkes, Bereavement Studies of Grief in
Adult Life (New York: International UniversitiesTPress,’Inc.,
1972), pp. 138-140.

 

9Ibid. p. 117.

10Ibid. p. 112.

11Arthur C. Carr, Bernard Schoenberg, David Peretz, and
Austin H. Kutscher, Loss and Grief: Psychological Managements in
Medical Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, p. 112.

 

26

Chapter III

Development of a Concept About Death

In the early part of this century most of the deaths
occurred in the home, just as most of the funerals did, and
also almost all of the births. Children were around--they
saw the dying person as his disease progressed, they helped
in the care, they knew that death was part of life in a very
different way than our contemporary children do. At this
time the education system also contributed a great deal to
children's knowledge about death because many of the school
books contained stories and poems about death and burial,
often the death and burial of children. For example, of the
books commonly used in education of children 100 years ago,

McGuffey's Fifth Eclectric Reader, included 57 poems, 27 of

 

which clearly referred to death and dying.1 Infant mortality

was high, many children died from communicable and other diseases,
medical technology was not nearly as far advanced as it is now,
many mothers died in childbirth, men were involved in hazardous
occupations and there were no safety codes. Many children ac-
tually were orphaned at an early age, and they regularly ex-
perienced the death of other children. There has always been

a tendency for the writing of any period to reflect the per—

sonal and social conditions of the environment.

There are no simple, foolproof answers to death, the

27

28
most difficult question of all questions. Not only children
but adults differ more widely in their reactions to death than
to any other human phenomenon. But in trying to help children
see death as an inevitable human experience and in sharing
grief with them, the parents may be able to diminish in the
process their own bewilderment and distress. Instead of feel-
ing indequate because they do not know what happens after
death, adults should welcome their children's questions as
occasions to explore the problem with them.

That death is the most upsetting and stressful of all
life's experiences was concluded by Paykel, Prusoff, and
Uhlenhuth. In their study of sixty-one stressful life events,
the respondents ranked the sixty-one events in order of stress-
fulness. the top four are:

1. "Death of a child"

2. "Death of a spouse"
3. "Jail sentence"
4. "Death of a close family

member (parent, sibling)"

Death of a close friend, the only other death—related
event listed, was ranked sixteenth, also high in the ranking.
It is significant that three of the tOp four involved death
and it makes the management of the death every so important in
terms of future physical, mental, and social health.

The message comes through stronger and stronger from
the literature--face the fact, admit the hurt, cry, and do

it publicly.

29

Although each person realizes that he or she will
eventually die, few people talk about death, unless jokingly;
and even then it is usually not about death of someone close.
Consequently, most people fear death and feel, somehow, that
by avoiding its verbalization that they can deny its exist-
ence and therefore its terminatinaly.

In the forward of psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's
book, Death: The Final Stage of Growth (Prentice-Hall, 1975),
Joseph and Laurie Braza, the book's general editors, state the
following:

Death is a subject that is evaded, ignored, and denied
by our youth-worshiped, progress-oriented society. It
is almost as if we have taken on death as just another
disease to be conquered. But the fact is that death is
inevitable. We will all die; it is only a matter of
time. Death is as much a part of human existence, of
human growth and development as being born. It is one
of the few things in life we can count on, that we can
be assured will occur. Death is not an enemy to be
conquered or a prison to be escaped. It is an inter-
gral part of our lives that gives meaning to human
existence. It sets a limit on our time in this life,
urging us on to do something productive with that time
as long as it is ours to use.

In addition to the accepted fact that knowledge about
and preparation for a critical or traumatic event lessens the
psychological effects and helps in the recovery process, teach-
ing about death has yet another justification. Young people
today are placed in a contradictory and seemingly untenable
situation. On the one hand, they are faced daily with life-
and death concerns. War, abortion and euthanasia, growing

teen-age suicides rates, the entire ecological question, vio-

lence in the media, the mounting drug problem--all of these

30

are real problems facing young people today. On the other
hand, adults deny them the opportunity to develope a realistic
frame of reference through which to draw conclusions and
formulate solutions.

John Goodlad, Dean of the College of Education at
U.C.L.A. has charged that "much of the subject matter of today's
learning is unrealistically narrow and antiseptic." Alvin

Toffler, in Future Shock ask, "Why . . . must teaching be

 

organized around such fixed disciplines as English, Economics,
Mathematics, or Biology? Why not around stages of the human
cycle: a course on birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage,
career, retirement, death." And Alfred North Whitehead states
unequivocally, "There is only one subject matter for education,
and that is Life in all its manifestations."

Many writers have contributed to the literature on how
children develop an understanding about death, and there is
general agreement that this understanding develops in an order-
ly sequence from a state of total unawareness in very early
childhood through several stages to.the point where death can
be considered logically in terms of cause and outcome.

Researchers agree that age is an important factor to
be considered in assessing a child's understanding of death.
For some time Maria Nagy's research (1959) on children's views
of death was accepted without question. Many supported her
proposal that a child's ideas about death are formed between

the ages of two and nine, (Jackeson, 1965; Kliman, 1968; Cook,

31
1973 and Zeligs, 1974). Nagy stated that the child's ideas
of death develop in three stages. Each stage marked by a
different view of death and correlates with a particular biolo-
gical stage of development therefore grouping by age often
indicates which aspect of death most concerns a child.

A child of two can sense loss and suffer the feelings
that goes with that loss, but is not likely to comprehend death
in an intellectual sense. We can respond to the child's feel-
ings; but explanations, even if possible, are likely to be of
little value at this age. Before approximately three years
of age the majority of young children have no conception of
death and knows only the ideas and feelings associated with
physical separation.

The young toddler has experienced separation from his
mother and may even experiment with separation in the form of
the game "peek-a-boo". It is interesting to note that the
term "peek-a-boo" stems from an old English phrase meaning
"alive or dead", as defined in Partridge's Etymodogial Diction-

ary of Modern English, 1925. In this safe and controllable

 

situation the child can risk and regain a relationship by play-
ing at separation and reunion; symbolically, this can be seen
as a game of death, disappearance, and renewal (Kastenbaum,
1967)3.

Children of three to five, however, have been exposed
to the death of plants, insects, animals and real or fictional

characters on T.V. and in children's books. Children at this

32
age tend to think of death as a temporary condition and view
it as a separation; a departure.

The three to five year old's comprehension level is
limited. The biological process of death is being discovered,
so questions will tend to be factual. The discovery of death
is a great personal and usually private experience and serves
to bring out this child's entire store of psychological de-
fenses (Rochlin, 1953). The child develops a concept of death
in which death is temporary, reversible, and the result of
defiance of authority, aggression, or sexual impulses. The
fact that the three to five year old views death as accidental
(ie., not invitable) and reversible has also been explained
in relation to cognitive development in terms of the pre-
operational child's inability to use logic, his egocentricity,
and the fact that his thought processes are tied to perceptual
facts rather than conceptual idea (Praget, 1951; Nagy, 1948;
and Anthony, 1940).4 Three to five year olds also attribute
life and consciousness to the dead, who may be described as
"just sleeping"; this fact also can be explained in terms of
the young child's egocentricity and reliance only on perception.
Because the young child experiences everything as living, he
projects life-like qualities into all objects because the level
of egocentricity inhibits him from conceptualizing non-being
(Nagy, 1948)?

The child's first concepts of death may be oral in
nature as evidenced in fairy tales such as "Hansel and Gretel"

and "Little Red Riding Hood" where death is the result of in-

33

gestion and this can be undone. Other stories which reflect
and may tend to reinforce this view of death are the volumes
of cartoons in which the characters are killed violently, only
to return in the next scene fully alive and whole. The specific
effects of such cartoons and fairy tales, however, are unknown.
Counteracting these unrealistic encounters with death are the
death-related experiences that young children have with animals.
The importance of animals to child's death-concept development
falls into three major categories: the child's agression to-
wards animals, his identification with small animals, and the
fact that his first encounter with reality of death may be a
dead animal (Anthony, 1972)6. Many children have impulses of
both cruelty and tenderness towards animals; such cruelty to-
wards insects and small animals is not phychologically abnormal
or prognostic of a disordered personality, but rather an ex-
perimentation with death. To a young child, the term "to kill"
is not a harmful expression but rather synonymous with "to get
rid of". This impulse to kill and feel powerful is counteracted
by a tendency to identify with the small animal victim; thus
often after an animal is killed, the child will feel remorseful
and try to revive the dead animal to life. This experience
with a dead insect or animal gives the child his first clue to
the irreversibility and finality of death.

It is interesting to note that fear of death is found
in children as young as three years of age and appears to

develop parallel to the emergence of concept formation and the

34

formation of guilt (Wahl, 1959).7

Because five year olds cannot conceive of their own
death, view of death as reversible and temporary, and usually
attribute life and consciousness to the dead, it is at first
difficult to see how such young children can fear death because
of the harmlessness of the conceptualization. Moller, (1967)
points out, however, that because death is associated with
violence, the five year old is concerned not with death's per-
manance but rather with bodily injury within the immediate fut-
ure and the fear of not being fed or cared for (fear of separ-
ation and abandonment). This fear of abandonment is associ-
ated with the child's inability to view death realistically.
Thus the possible death of a child's mother is viewed by the
five year old in a self-centered way because the mother is per-
ceived not as a person with her own life but as someone who
fills the child's needs and wishes; death of the mother thus
means danger: and insecurity to the child.

In the early part of the three to five year olds most
children begin to accept that there is an all-powerful force
in the universe that controls the workings of the world, and

8 If a child experiences a family

to which they must adjust.
death as early as three or four, the separation is still the
most significant aspect, and his questions reflect this.
"Where did he go?" "When will he come back?" "What is he

doing?” These questions are very difficult to answer to the

satisfaction of a very young child because of his limited frame

35
of reference, and because he does not understand he may react
with intense anger and experience severe rejection.

As children grow towards five they regard death as a
departure, but they feel that it is reversible and that the
dead person or animal will somehow return and go on just as
usual, or that he is doing all the usual things when no one is
looking, for example at night, or in the attic, or even in
the grave they think that life continues. They also have con-
siderable faith in their own omnipotence and their ability to
make things happen, simply by wishing. Small children find
it easy to wish death to people who interfere with their free-
dom. but his threats of violence are meant to get the inter-
ferers out of the way, for the immediate present, so they can
do as they please. The reversibiltiy of death serves as a
conforting protection to them.9

For four or five-year-olds, immobility is the crucial
factor about death, but of course it is reversible. They begin
to accept that death happens but only when they are old. Most
of them do not believe that they themselves will ever die or
that children will ever get old; they can stretch their imagina-
tionsr at age five to personal parenthood but to grandparenthood?
That is much more difficult.

Children begin to believe that death is permanent as
they grow toward six. This is associated with the development
of the time sense; yesterday, next week, last month begin to
have meaning. Many children become exceedingly anxious about

10

death during this stage. Perhaps this is the reason that

36

Ilg and Ames said that children have their worst troubles
about death when they are six year old.11

From six to nine years of age, the child can neither
deny or accept death fully, so death is seen as real and per-
manent, but external and distant and thus not related to self.
(Kastenbaum 1967), The children interviewed by Nagy showed
another interesting characteristic. They tended to think of
death as a person. The death-person might be a frightening
clown, for example, or a mysterious figure who makes his
rounds in the night. Another feature of the children's death
thinking at this developmental level was their belief that one
could "luck out" and avoid death. Although death was seen as
final, the clever or lucky person might not get caught.12 It
is during the concrete operational period, between approximately
six and nine years, that the child is ruled by artificialism
the belief that the world is made by man for man. Thus death
is seen as an eventuality but is outside of man and not univer-
sal (Nagy, 1948).13 More specifically, the six to seven year
old is becoming more aware of death emotionally and intellectu-
ally and may even suspect his own death, but deny it as a reality.
Interest is directed towards objective aspects of death; biolo-
gical facts and social facts including details about funeral
ceremonies. The eight to nine year old progesses his interest
in death to what happens after death, such as bodily disinteg-
ration (Geseall and Ilg, 1946 and Wulf, 1973)}4

By the time a child is eight or nine years Old, he has

probably traveled far enough to have his horizons expanded. His

37

capacity for grasping enlarged ideas has deveIOped. However,
large ideas still have their focus upon himself, his life, and
his feelings. When the father of a nine year old boy died,
the child's grief was centered about an unfinished racing car
he and his father were making. His disappointment was real
enough, but it was related to the point at which he and his
father were sharing (Jackson, 1965).15

As the child approaches adolescence, he becomes in-
creasingly equipped with the intellectual tools needed to under-
stand both life and death logically (Praget, 1960). At about
nine or ten years of age, the child is finally able to recog-
nize the inevitability of his own death (Nagy, 1948).16 Specif-
ically, the acceptance of the sentence, "I will die". This
requires self-awareness; logical thought operations; and con-
ceptions of probability of finality and separation.

Like cognitive development, the development of a mature
death concept follows a fairly fixed, irreversible order of
succession of these levels, however, may be accelerated or re-
tarded by particular events in the physical, social and cul-
tural environment. Specifically, experience with death has
been shown to be significantly correlated with realistic know-
ledge about death (Wulf, 1973).17 It is noted that most ten year
olds seem to have made the transition in both mental develop-
ment and emotional security; they now express an understanding
Of death as a final and inevitable outcome of life (Kastenbaum,
1967).18 No longer is it a queStion of hiding under the bed

covers to escape the death man. From children ten years and

38

and younger, Nagy heard definitions such as the following:
"Death is like the withering of flowers." " . . .the termin-
ation of life . . ." ”we finish our earthly life. Death is
the end of life on earthl' "Death is something that no one can
escape." "Everyone has to die once but the soul lives on."
Around this time, children have also improved their
ability to recognize the difference between animated and in-
animated objects. The general concept of death is difficult
to develop until the child has had enough experience with the
world to learn what is alive. Investigators disagree somewhat
concerning the processes by which children learn to distinguish
the living from the not-living, and the exact age at which the
distinction generally occurs. But the evidence suggests that
most children have made a close approximation to the adult's
view of living and not-living by the age of ten if not before
(I. Huang and H. W. Lee, 1945; G. Klingberg, 1957; R. W. Russell,
1970, A. L. Strauss, 1951).19 The work of Praget, Anthony and
others further suggests that as the child approaches adolescen-
cence he is equipped withlmnMZOf the intellectual tools necess-
ary to understand both life and death in a logical manner. He
now has completed his basic develOpment of concepts of time,
space, quanity, and causality. This gives him a framework with-
in the idea of death can be placed. The world is a more com-
prehensible and predictable place. Death can be understood in
relation to "natural law" in general; it is no longer a phantom

or will o'the wisp (Kastenbaum, 1976).20

39

Children from eleven onward can think abstractly and
have the capacity to think of death in adult terms. At fif-
teen and sixteen abstractions frequently become the most im-
portant area of life. At this age, the person searches for
meanings and values, and philosophizes at great length. He
raises the same kind of psychological, spiritual or religious
questions about death as he does about life. Children eleven
and older should be considered intellectual equals in sharing
understanding of death. Children in their early teens may
wish to explore the religious and philosophical meanings of
death with their parents. Older children, as with other aspects
of their lives, may wish to share this understanding more with
their peers.

In adolescence the child has come a very long way from
"peek-a-boo" to his appreciation of death as the inevitable
termination of life. But now he encounters new problems and
opportunities; the child's understanding is no longer suffic-
ient. Rapid transformations are-being experienced in every
sphere-~physica1, social, emotional, cognitive. He begins to
explore the alternatives, the options and whatlfitmsbefore him.
Sooner or later the adolescent halikely to turn to his new
intellectual resources to the subject of death. Previously
he had been led to believe certain propositions about ”life
after death"--now he may be inclined to examine these propo-
sitions critically. It is not enough to acknowledge the bare
reality of death. Somehow, this reality must become integrated

into his total view of life. As the adolescent begins to form

40
his own purposes and make his own decisions he becomes aware
that all his hopes, expectations, ambitions, require time for
their actualization. The adolescent stands here, at a certain
point in time. Off in the distance on the other side of time,
stands death. This new self that he is developing and these
new purposes that are emerging confront a natural enemy death.
To grow up and lead one's own life in one's own way--this is
certainly a tremendous prospect. But one grows up . . .to die.
What sense does that make? (Kastenbaum, 1967).21 The adole-
scent's understanding of death will be shaped by his own life
experiences. "Attitudes" or "viewpoint" is just as significant
as basic mental ability. Anthony (1972)22 has also found that
children's death concepts tend to reflect those of the society
in which they are reared. Kastenbaum (1967)23 goes one step
further and asserts that children's understanding of death may
actually be complicated or distored by the parental generation's
attitudes and understanding of death. Although he offers no
proof of this hypothesis, one can easily imagine how a parent's
irrational fears or superstitions about death may be passed onto
a child.

Even after a mature and realistic concept of death has
been acquired, however, its development continues and no final
point is ever reached. Thoughts about death are forever inter-
twined with an individual's personality, the meaning and quality

of his life, and his personal experiences with death.

Chapter III

REFERENCES

1Symp. II, Groups for the Advancement of Psychiatry,
Death and Dying (New York: Mental Health Materials, Inc. ,
1965), p. 66f.

 

2Eugene S. Paykel, Brigitle A. Prusoff, and E.H.
Uhlenhuth, "Scaling of Lifes Events," Archives of General
Psychiatry 25 (October 1971) : 340-347.

 

3Robert Kastenbaum, "The Child's Understanding of
Death : How does it develop? Explaining Death to Children
(E. A. Grooman, 1967.

4S. Anthony, The Child's Discovery of Death (London
D. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., LTD., 1940) M. Nagy, "The
Child's Theories Concerning Death, "Journal of Genetic Psychology
73 (1948) 3-27; J. Praget, The Child's Conceptions of PhySical
Causality (New Jersey: Littlefield: Adams and Co., 1960).

 

SM. Nagy, "The Child's Theories Concerning Death,"
Journal of Genetic Psychology 73 (1948): 3-27.

 

68. Anthony, The Child's Discovery of Death (London:
D. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. , LTD. ,1940).

 

7C.W. Wahl, "The Fear of Death," in The Meaning of Death
H. Feifel (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., Inc., 1959).

8J. S. Plant, The Envelope (New York: The Commonwealth
Fund, 1950), p. 41.

 

9H. Page, Playtime in the First Five Years (New York:
J. B. Lippincott, 1954) p. 125.

 

10Herman Feifel, The Meaning of Death (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1959), pp.22-23.

 

41

42

11F. D. 11g, child Behavior (New York: Harper G Brothers,
1955), pp. 311-313.

 

12Robert Kastenbaum, "Death and Development Through
The Lifespan," New Meaning of Death (New York: McGraw-Hill,
Inc., 1977), p. 28.

 

13M. Nagy, "The Child's Theories Concerning Death,"
Journal of Genetic Psychology 73 (1948): 3-27.

 

14A. Gesell and F. L. Ilg, The Child From Five to Ten
(New York: Harper and Broghers Publishers, 1946); and C. W.
Wahl, "The Fear of Death," in The Meaning of Death, H. Feifel
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1959).

 

15E. N. Jackson, Telling A Child About Death (New York:
Hawthorn Books, 1965).

 

16M. Nagy, "The Child's Theories Concerning Death,"
Journal of Genetic Psychology 73(1948):3-27.

 

17C. W. Wahl, "The Fear of Death," The Meaning of Death
H. Feifel (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1959),

18Robert Kastenbaum, "The Child's Understanding of Death:
How does it develop?" in Ex laining Death to Children Earl
Grollman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).

 

196. Klingberg, "The Distinction Between Living and Not
Living Among 7-10 year old children with some remarks concerning
the so-called animism controversy," Journal of Genetics and
Psychology 105 (1957) : 227-238; and R. W. Russell, "Studies in
Animism: II. The Development of Animism, " Journal of Genetics
and Psychology 56 (1940): 353-366.

 

 

20Robert Kastenbaum, "The Childs Understanding of Death:
How does it develop?" in Explaining Death to Children. Earl
Grollman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967),

 

21Ibid.

228. Anthony, The Discovery of Death in Childhood and
After (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1972).

 

23Robert Kastenbaum, "The Childs Understanding of Death:
How does it develop?" in Explaining Death To Children Earl Grollmam
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).

 

Chapter IV
Explaining Death To Children

Children's feelings and perspectives are especially over-
looked in our death-denying, death-defying culture. After all,
parents are struggling with their own grief and could not pos-
sibly believe that children can understand the tragic situation.

Not only parents but the teacher at school may heighten
the feelings of the child's isolation. The child returns to
class where school continues as usual, as if nothing significant
had occurred. Each is pretending as if life is unchanged. "But
can children really understand death?"

Children growing up today are all too aware of the reality
of death, perhaps even more than is realized. Even at a very
young age, children are confronted with that process when life
no longer exists.

A pet is killed. A funeral procession passes by. A
grandfather dies. A leader is assassinated. And, of course,
there is television with the picture of death in living color.

Children encounter death in many forms. Silence only
deprives them from the opportunity to share their grief.

In explaining death to children we must first prepare
ourselves. We must sit down and watch them while they play and

work. We must be quiet and learn to listen to what they say.

43

44
We need to observe in action and hear the tone and timbre of
their voices. Children should be encouraged to tell how they
feel about death, what they think and what they know.

Investigations into childen's attitudes to death today
reveal a great deal of anxiety, and if the old patterns of dying
and death have changed new ones have taken their place. The
nineteenthgcentury' child may have been aware of death in his
immediate circle, but the twentieth-century child has access to
television and radio and the press, and is extensively informed,
often mis-informed of death and disasters, violence and sensation-
al destruction throughout the world. As the earlier--maturing
child passes into adolescence we find 'the supreme fear' be-
comes evident--i.e. the total death of Homo sapiens by nuclear
explosions. Nothing like this ever entered the conscious mind
of the Victorian child.

Adults do not understand the complete meaning of death.
Professionals continue to wrestle with this question. No mortal
has ever pierced the veil of this great mystery. Yet, there is
the inescapable responsibility to share with children the frag-
ments of our experience and knowledge.

Do not teach children as if we have the final answer that
they must accept. Parents can show their maturity when they can
respond to their children: "Are you surprised that I do not
know everything about death? Don't be. Yet we can still talk
about it. You can learn from me. I can learn something from you
and we can help each other."

Nagy's investigation demonstrated three recurring questions

in a child's mind: "What is death? " "What makes people die?"

45
"What happens to people when they die, where do they go?" The
question arises constantly about what we should tell a child
when death occurs. Should we avoid acknowledgment that the
person has died? Should we suggest that a grandfather became
ill and had to go away to a hospital where he could recuperate
and become cured, hoping that his memory would gradually fade
away and the child will come to accept the absence as being the
norm?

Evasions indicates the uncertainty the parent has about
the child's capacity to deal with existing situations and also
may indicate the uncertaintly the parent himself may feel about
the subject of death. But this may encourage the child to develop
the capacity to "forget about things," and does not prepare the
child to deal with life's realities. The truth should never be
covered up with fiction that will someday repudiate. There is
no greater need than trust and truth.

Statements like, "Your mother has gone away for a long
journey for a very long time," is geared to provide solace and
to ease the strain of a mother's disappearance. But the child
might interpret this explanation to mean that his mother has
abandoned and deserted him without saying "good-bye." The
child may be far from being comforted and of holding the memory
of the deceased dear, he may react with anger and resentment.

The child could also develop the delusion that someday
the mother will return. Or unconsciously he may assume, "Mommy
didn't really care enough about me so she stayed away." Also

if mother only went away on a journey, why is everyone crying?"

46

Statements like, "God took Daddy when he was so young
because your father was so good that he wanted your father for
himself." It's really hard to believe that there is a relation-
ship between longevity and goodness. It is true that the right-
eous may surely die young, but he can also live to a ripe old
age.

Children can develop all kinds of ideas with this type
of explanation. The child can develop a deep resentment against
God who capriciously robbed her of her father. The child can
also become upset and come up with the thought that if God
loves me, that maybe they will be the next one He will take
away.

Children also want to know if death is like sleeping.

It is only natural to draw this kind of parallel. In the Iliad
Homer alludes to sleep (Hypnos) and death (Thanatoes) as twin
brothers, and many of our religious prayers entwine the ideas
of sleep and death. Be careful, however, to explain the dif-
ference between sleep and death; otherwise, you run the risk

of causing a pathological dread of bedtime. There are children
who toss about in fear of going to "forever sleep” never to
wake up again. Some children actually struggle with all their
might to remain awake, fearful that they might go off to the
deceased's type of "sleep."

There are a number of explanations of death which, though
well intentioned, create in the young child more confusion, doubt,
guilt and fear than understanding.

---"Your Daddy has gone away for a very long time." is interpreted

47
by the child as an act of desertion. He is likely to view this
as an act of punishment and react with strong feelings of guilt
and resentment.
---"Mommy is now in Heaven" is an explanation that a young child
finds impossible to reconcile with the fact that Mother is, at
the same time, buried in the cemetary.
---"It is God's will" introduces a question about God's goodness
and love just at a time when a child needs all the support and
security he can get.
---"Grandpa died because he was sick" seems like an acceptable
explanation on the surface. Yet people are often sick and do
not die. The young child is not able to discriminate between
grave illnesses and those that are minor in nature. In the fut-
ure a fearful child could readily connect any kind of sickness
with death. Young children have a very limited amount of factual
information with which to understand the world around them.
They introduce a lot of magical thinking into their understanding
of cause-effect relationship. If the child is told that "Grandma
went to the hospital and died" it is very easy for him to con-
clude that hospitals "make peOple die."
---"To die is to sleep" is again an analogy which has a lot of
support in language and religions. But if you want to avoid
some sleeping problems with children you should take care to.
make a clear distinction between sleep and death. This same dan-
ger exists when we teach our children to pray "if I should die be-
fore I wake".

A child's capacity to feel develops far in advance of his

48
capacity to verbalize his feelings. Young children communicate
their feelings through their actions. We, in turn, should re-
spond to their feelings with our actions.

Children of two or three can sense changes in the feel-
ings and actions of those around them. Since their world is
made up of immediate feelings and actions, they need to feel
security and stability to the extent possible during a family
crisis. Their routines should not be varied from the usual any
more than is necessary. Hold them and talk to them in a calm
manner about things with which they are familiar. Try to give
them more attention then they usually receive. Your actions
should support warmth and reassurance. Children four to six
attach their feelings to other people. At the same time that
they are experiencing the pains of the separation and loss
of a loved one. They are also concerned about others upon
whom they depend. Their unexpressed fear is "who is next?"

In the "coming and goings" during a family crisis, this con-
cern may be expressed by an even greater than usual anxiety
over the departure of Daddy or Mommy from the house or even
from the room. Again, the child can be made to feel more
secure by being held frequently. In addition, the child needs
the repeated reassurance that Daddy and Mommy are not only
here now, but will be around for a very long time.

Children from the age of about seven onward establish
meaningful relationships with a number of people. In addition,
their sense of time extends beyond their immediate experiences

and into the future. They experience the death of someone close

49
not only in terms of the immediate pain of separation but also
in terms of the effect of that loss on their future. If Grandpa
were teaching him how to cast his first line, or he and Dad
were planning a camping trip, this will be the focus of his
concern. And it may seem to others as if he were more upset
over fishing or camping than the loss of the deceased. This
is not at all the case. Parents who do not understand this,
however, are not likely to respect and accept his feelings on
this level. He needs sympathy and support for his feelings and
not criticism or rejection because of the manner in which he
expresses them. A child seven to ten years of age still primar-
ily focuses on his own feelings. At eleven or twelve, however,
he is not only sensitive to his own feelings, but can enter in-
to the feelings of others. He is able to empathize. Children
eleven and older not only need support and comfort but are
themselves the source of support and comfort for others.
Opportunities to be helpful to others during a family crisis
can also help them deal with their own feelings.

Children depend upon their parents for emotional secur-
ity. During a family crisis they need to be protected from wit-
nessing the emotional collapes of those upon whom they depend.
Beyond this extreme, however, to be less than honest and frank
about our deepest feelings excludes the child from the emotional
life of the family and makes it increasingly difficult for the
parent to help the child face his own feelings honestly. When
children are in on things and feel that adults are not trying

to hide things from them, the feelings of sorrow and loneliness,

50
anger and rejections, anxiety and insecurity that they are
likely to experience in the family when a death does happen
will be considerably softened.

In talking to children about death, it is important to
communicate the idea that death, itself, does not hurt. We are
crying because we hurt inside. We are sad because we have lost
a relationship that meant much to us. Children, being as close
to their own feelings as they are, can readily accept these feel-
ings of closeness with their parents. Nor is it a one-way street.
The necessity to be open, frank and honest with children helps
parents face their own grief more quickly.

Just as we cannot hide the fact of a death from children,
we should not attempt to exclude them from the grief and mourn-
ing that follows. As a member of the family on every important
occasions, even sad ones. Attendance at the funeral confronts
the child with the reality that a death has occurred and helps
him acknowledge his loss. The funeral service rec0gnizes the
values of the deceased person's life and helps us give vent to
honest feelings of dismay, disappointment and pain at our loss.
We say good-bye, in a significant and appropriate manner, through
the rites and rituals we follow at death.

Today's funeral services have evolved through the
years as a result of man's instincitive wish to honor his dead.
At different period in history, in different cultures, funeral
customs have developed in characteristic ways. But always, the
funeral serves many purposes. It symbolizes the beliefs of the

society, its hopes, its ideals, its religious concepts.

51

Writers with Carl Sandburg's breadth of vision and depth
of compassion write of death for children, write of it creative-
ly and as a natural part of the experience called living. In
such writings as "Blue Silver" death is not a negative force but
a positive one shaping the life currents that flow from it; it
may be a physical tragedy, but from the tragdy comes spiritual
triumph; it is not an end, but the beginning of a new influence,
a new motivation, a new understanding. As a child learns of life
from books he reads, so may he learn of death which is a part of
life.

In the end, what each person is will determine what he
will teach his child. If parents are disturbed by the thought
of death their children will feel anxieties and tensions too.
Regardless of language employed emotional tones are transmitted.
The real challenge is not just how to explain death to your
children but how to understand and made peace with it yourself.

The facts of death should be explained in two words:
naturally and lovingly.

A parent might initiate the conversation by talking about
the flowers growing in the spring and summer only to be followed
by their fading away in the fall and winter seasons. This is
the sequence of life. For all living things there is a time to
grow, flouish, and then to die.

Explanations should be presented without lurid, grue-
some or terrifying description. Proceed slowly and simply,
step by step, with patience and gentleness. Fears will be

lessened when the discussion is initially focussed not upon

52
the morbidity of death but upon the beauty of life.

The wise management of grief in children revolves around
the encouragement and facilitation of the normal mourning pro-
cess andtflkipyevention of delayed and/or distorted grief re-
sponses. Gorer1 has commented that the more group activity of
a structured, ritualized, and ceremonial form there is at the
time of an emotional crisis, the more the toal personality be-
comes engaged in the healthful processes of acting out the deep
feelings. When these are denied, the feelings are repressed
and find expression through unhealthy detours such as physical
illness, self-destructive behavior, or unfortunate personality
changes.

When participating in the funeral ceremony is not feas-
ible or practical the child could later visit the funeral home
with a mature and competent adult who would answer his questions.
An older child may be introduced to appropriate literature, which
explains the various aspects of death and dying including funeral
ceremonies. Such publications as Grollman's 2 ExplainingDeath

To Children, and Kubler-Ross3 On Death and Dying answer many

 

 

questions which may be puzzling the adolescent or young adult.

A survey of children's literature reveals much about
what we have told children about death. Though the Mother Goose
nursery rhymes speak of death in a bold and forthright manner, the
era of the Puritans remind us that death was used as a threat
for children to exhibit good behavior. Is it any wonder children
view death as the results of a certain set of conditions?4

Television shows children that heros and villians regard

53
deaths lightly. Children view numerous deaths daily on their
favorite shows. Heroes are heroes because they always manage
to escape death. What does this teach children about the in-
evitability of death? Death is given unrealistic attention on
television's battlefields, yet it is removed from the realm of
feeling as just another fictitiousexperience.5

Parents try to protect children by avoiding the subject
of death and filling them with half-truths. Therefore leaving
them to encounter a world by everyday experiences, with only
their own fantasies to protect them.

As parents you must constantly remind yourself of your
responsibilities to educate. First, you must not avoid the
subject of death and dying. It is a natural process that is
evident to children. You must respond to their needs, other-
wise, you leave the answer they seek to imagination or to their
highly unqualified peer group. Secondly, you must understand
that questions they ask before you attempt to respond. Many
counselors suggest questioning children to guage their under-
standing. If a child asks a question, regardless of how dif-
ficult it may be, he or she deserves an answer. The respondent,
however, should not hesitate to say, "I don't know" when that
is the case. Third, parents must not deceive the child. Re-
sponses, above all else, should be honest! Parents should
attempt to answer the questions with the most sincere, direct,
and truthful response possible. The child's questions follow—
ing this answer should help to alert you as to the child's com-

prehension. Follow-up is then usually necessary. Fourth,

54
parents should allow the child to participate in grief. We
should encourage the child to confirm that death occurs to all
peOple and all living things. Fifth, parents should openly
discuss with the child his or her vieWpoints on death and dy-
ing. This discussion can help establish a base from which the

child can operate during encounters with death and dying.

Chapter IV

REFERENCES

1Geoffrey Gorer, Death, Grief, and Mourning (New York:
Doubleday, 1965).

2Earl A. Grollman, (Ed.), Explaining Death to Children
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).

3Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York:
MacMillan, 1972.

4Thomas J. Schur, "What Man Has Told Children About
Death," Omega 2 (1971) : 86.

SHerman Feifel, New Meaning of Death (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1977) p. S.

55

Chapter V
Program Development

Parents need to understand the ideas that children have
about death. In her book on children's attitudes towards death,
Mitchell1 points out that very little research has been done on
the develOpment of these attitudes, although well before the age
of six most children have discovered death in fact or conversat-
ion and are very interested in finding out more about it.

Mitchell also notes that most of the research in this
field is of the "opinion poll" variety, and there has been little
effort to refine or improve on this. In the now classic studies
by Anthony2 and Nagy3, data is interpreted in ways that credit
the child with superordinate levels of abstractive ability;
Anthony's subjects were chiefly her own sibblings. It was there-
fore my intent to work directly with children. That by talking
directly to parents and children that a better understanding
could develop.

First there was the decision of the age level of the
children I would be using. I decided to focus on children three
to six. Next I needed to find the children. Although I was
not able to include children from all economic levels, I feel
in the future this should be considered. The children I used

were all from mid to high income families, professionals. This

56

57
I feel could have influenced the attitudes of the children inter-
viewed. Several fathers were in the medical profession and
some of the others were Professors, Bankers, and Attorneys.

My sister having two children of her own, ages six
and four, was my source for pre-school and younger aged child-
ren. Despite the risk involved in interviewing younger child-
ren while taping, (never really knowing what to expect or how
they would respond), I wanted to experiment with this particular
situation and see if we could elicit some meaningful comments
concerning death and what if any response these young children
would show to the questions concerning death. Faced with this
challenge, I opted for a younger set of children, rather than an
older, more predictable set.

Prior to taping the children were not told about the
subject matter or what questions would be asked. I wanted spont-
aneity at the expense of security thatzlrehearsal might have
afforded. As the parents arrived at the park, I was introduced
and they signed the release forms found in Appendix 2.

All of the children's parents gave permission for them
to discuss the tOpic of death and what dying meant to them in
an interview. Only one parent contacted was concerned what the
subject of death would do to her four year old and wanted to
know the specific questions that would be asked. She was also
concerned with having her child hear the responses of the other
children, afraid they might mention being buried, and other
factors that might frighten her four year old. She decided,

however to allow the interview, but failed to show the day of

58
the taping.

To acquire the equipment necessary I contacted several
firms, fourteen altogether before deciding on Texas Instruments,
(T.I.). Most firms charged for a full day starting at $1,000.00
or half-day starting at $500.00. Texas Instruments charged by
the hour. I needed to decide on the quality of picture I wanted
and finally made the decision to go with the better quality
camera. They (T.I.) charged $110.00 per hour plus a charge for
coming to the site of your choice. Choice of equipment can be
found in Appendix 3. The decision I reached was based on my
limited funds and my desire to achieve the best quality possible
with those limited funds.

I decided that the neighborhood playground would make
a nice remote location. We neEded to shoot at 8:00 a.m. since
in Dallas it had been over 100 degrees for the past three weeks.
The park was a neighborhood park in which the children were
familiar and had swings, a slide, merry-go-round, monkey bars,
picnic table and wooden bench. The park backed up to a creek
and a wooded area with bike and walking trails. The neighbor-
hood was named Town Creek and all of the children participating
in my program resided in this neighborhood of approximately 500
families with residential prOperty priced $150,000.00 and up.

A socio-economic study would be interesting to pursue in another
study relating different attitudes towards death.

After contacting the children's parents my sister and I
discussed the other talent needed for the program:- J. Claude

Evans, M.TH., D. D., a family counselor and Patricia Kinney Barrett,

59
writer and publisher of The Aardvark Readers (pre-school level)
and a parent of two children; Mary Jane Childress who's masters
degree is in psychology and is also a parent; Howard Miller,
M. D. in adult and adolescence psychiatry; Donny Anderson, a
parent and former football player with the St. Louis Cardinals,
now self-employed in fiance; Carol Watkins, a parent and R. N.;
and Jack Crosby, a special agent for the F. B. 1., also a free
lance model and parent.

These people were selected because of their particular
knowledge and they also had young children, with the exception
of Dr. Evans. They had different backgrounds and occupations.
Due to my limited time schedule and theirs,the proximity of
the park made the taping possible. The variety of personalities
ranged from the masculine image of an outstanding athlete to
typical American mothers to a familar father from the neighbor-
hood conducting the interviews with the children to a Chaplain,
all,I feel doing an excellent job of expressing their views
in an sincere and honest way, making for a very good audio-visual
presentation.

The evening before the remote, I went to Jack's home.
He was to interview the children. We went over the questions
and then went to the park to go over the moves I wanted him to
make and where I wanted him to talk to the different groups of
children. You can find the questions for the children in the
Appendix 4.

After I left Jack's, I went to Pat's house. Pat would

be interviewing the adults in the program. I went over the

60
questions with her and told her about the plans for the program.
These questions can be found in Appendix 5.

After spending two mornings observing the sun at 8:00 a.m.,
zuulstudyingthe layout of the park, I prepared a shot-sheet for
the camera men for cut-a-way shots. A copy of these are found
in Appendix 6. Also I prepared a list of scenes I wanted shot
which can be found in Appendix 7. I also developed a basic out-
line for the segments of the show as seen in Appendix 8.

To keep the children happy it was decided to take apple
juice and cookies to the park.

The morning of the remote I arrived at the park at 7:45
a.m. and went over the shots I wanted and waited for the crew.

I had expected the camera men at 8:00 a.m., I therefore in-
structed the children and parents to arrive at 8:15 a. m., allow-
ing set up time. The interviews were to begin at 8:20. I want-
ed the children present during the interviews for two reasons,
(1) I wanted voices in the background of children at play, (2)
when I was preparing for the next interview the camera men were
to be shooting cut-a-ways of the children playing in the park.

The first problem developed when the camera men only
brought one hand-held mike. I had to go ahead with my inter-
view because some of my peOple could not stay too long and had
other engagements. One of the two camera men returned to T.I.
for more mikes. The first three interviews went fine and then
I needed the camera moved to get Dr. Evans coming down the path
talking. I scheduled the interviews with the adults before the

children primarly because all of the adults had to leave, and

61
also I wanted to get their comments in the limited time I had
since I wasn't confident of what I would get from the children's
interviews.

Real problems started developing when Dr. Evans was at
the end of the path ready to go, but we weren't. His mike
was picking up a country western station. Another mike was
tried and then another cable; nOthing seemed to make any dif-
ference. Finally it was discovered that if the mike was plug-
ged directly into the recorder we lost the country music. Dr.
Evans would walk down the path with one camera man next to him,
out of sight in the woods, carrying the recorder. Then the
unforseeable happened, one of the camera men gave a pull on the
cable—-there was no cable left and the camera took a nose dive
straight forward and there was no-one near enough to prevent
it from falling. There it was a $48,000.00 camera with a
$15,000.00 lens on the ground! The camera was checked out and
it was determined that it could no longer zoom. The focus
could only be done manually. There was no way to get another
camera and it was impossible to reschedule the entire cast,

I had to make a decision--to go on or to stop.

I decided that I had to continue and attempt to do the
best I could with the damaged equipment. Because of this acci-
dent there were many cut-a-way shots I couldn't get. I couldn't
get the close ups I had wanted on the children's faces and I
couldn't zoom in or out on anything. I had to make changes
in the way I was shooting and try later to edit the segments

together. This resulted in more time required for the interviews.

62

Where there were four children involved, I put two on each
side of Jack. I started on a full shot and had him introduce
each child, he then stopped and I got close ups on two of the
children and he was only able to talk to the other two making
for a less relaxed situation and I think it affected the
responsiveness of the children, making them self conscious, where
a zoom would have avoided this. Once he was done with the two
sets of children, I once again went back to a final full shot.

I did lose some of my children before we were ready
to interview them because of the extra time involved with
delays due to the equipment. Fortunately most of my mothers
were able to stay and were very patient. The total time in-
volved was three and a half hours.

The end result was that I didn't get the product that
I wanted. In some cases I just didn't get anything at all
that I could use. (totally out of focus and shakey). The com-
ments by Dr. Evans were done three times. I still wasn't happy
with the end result but couldn't do any more with it. Dr. Evans
even called his office and told a client he would be late in
order to stay and finish his dialogue for us. After the camera
fell, Dr. Evans appears too soft and without a zoom the camera
man shook the camera as he attempted to focus by hand. Despite
the great dialogue of Dr. Evans, I was greatly disappointed in
the camera work and this particular segment in my program.

After returning home I called a nearby Jr. College and
was able to view the tapes. Just as I thought the video shots

before the camera fell were fine, but after the fall the quality

63

was only fair, this includes, Dr. Evan's stroll; the interviews
with the children., and the interview with Mary Jane Childress.
Fortunately some cut-a-ways of the children in the park playing
were completed before the camera was damaged, but I could have
used a lot more. I missed my planned shot of the sun through
the trees because by the time they were ready to go, the sun
had already cleared the trees. Hopefully my concept and ideas
will come across in my completed product inspite of the poor
camera quality.

The editing did turn out to be as hard as I anticipated
and it was difficult because much of the audio I had was good,
but the video quality was not. I didn't have enough extra video
to even cover what I wanted and I didn't have all the children
I wanted. But I feel that inspite of this, my experience with
a group of people who didn't know me and camera men that I had
never worked with was invaluable. Bob Carter from Texas Instru-
ments, the customer liaison for the media center for Texas Instru-
ments, told me his men found me well prepared and very professiOnal.
The experience with the camera gave me a great opportunity to
realize that I could keep things going in the face of disaster.
I had given much thought to all of the possible contingencies,
but I honestly never expected the camera falling and being
damaged. The odds of this occurring to me again are I hope

a million to one.

Chapter V
REFERENCES

1M. Mitchell, The Child's Attitude to Death (New York:
Schocken Books, 1967).

 

2S. Anthony, The Child's Discovery of Death (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1940).

 

3M. Nagy, "The Child's Theories Concerning Death,"
Journal Genetic Psychology 73 (1948) : 3-27.

 

64

Chapter VI
Results and Conclusions

It was apparent that these children were willing and
able to converse on the subject of death and dying without
fear. There were questions for which they might not have any
concrete answers, but they were in no way alarmed at the ques-
tions which were asked of them. One of the five year olds re-
sponded to the question, "How did you know your pet was dead?"
She replied "Her heart stopped pumping." Children are capable
of talking about death even at this very early age.

Silence teaches them only that the topic is taboo;
silence cannot help them to cope with their feelings of loss.
All three parents interviewed expressed the importance of open-
ness and honesty and being available for their children and
answering any questions that they might have.

These interviews with the children also indicate
that the best explanations for children, especially those
under the age of six are simple, direct, and ones that draw
as much as possible form the child's own experiences. In this
way the relative concreteness of the younger child will produce
the least possible distortions. As one four year old said when
asked if she wanted to grow old, she said "no”, but when the

following question asked if she wanted to live a very long time,

65

66
she responded "yes". Children at this age seem to have a con-
cept of time and being.

I wanted more children to interview, but due to the
limitations of my budget I was not able to finance a larger
sampling. However, with more video time available and more
children interviewed this could result in some very interesting
results. You could produce five half hour programs (even on
one particular age group) having individual interviews and group
interviews. You could take children 7-9 who have experienced
losses, and ones that haven't, one group from a low-socio-
economic group and one from a very high socio-economic group.
There are many combinations of ages and socio-economic levels
that could be involved with comparisons made, also you could
include those with different religious preferences.

A series of programs could be useful not only for parents
but teachers and older children. These tapes could be made
available for parents at P.T.A. meetings, at church meetings,

a series on television, a series put on 1/2" video for home
viewing that could be checked out from the libary or even civic
groups in a community could hold community meetings to show

the programs and discuss their content. This program or series
of programs could be used anywhere a video system could be set up.

Education is supposed to prepare young people for life,
and certainly death is one dimension of life. Our young child-
ren growing up in a society that tried to avoid aging and death
are limited in their exposure and Opportunities for growth.

Dr. Miller brought this out time and time again in his

67
interview. I definitely think that it is easier for children
to handle death when it happens in their families if they have
a kind of educational conditioning before hand, if they learn
to talk about death, if they learn to use the language of death,
and if they learn to accept the fact that death really does
happen to everyone. They will not have to use up so much energy
in fear and in avoidance during a death crisis if the subject
has become somewhat familiar to them.

I feel very strongly that children have to learn about
this part of life before they can come face-to-face with a
devastating separation experience, and that preparing them is
the job of responsible adults that are in their lives, particular-
ly parents, but also clergy and teachers.

All of us have responsibility for helping children learn
about the phenomenon of death, to help them understand and
accept that death is an intergral part of life's cycle. Death
is absolutely as real a part of life as is birth.

One point marks the beginning; the other its ending.

In the final analysis, death occurs exactly as often as birth--
everyone who is born must also die, a time for all seasons.

Grollman states in Talking About Death, that

In the end of course, what you are will determine what
you teach your children. You communicate your feelings,
your faith, and your fears both consciously and un-
consciously. The real challenge, therefore, is not

just how to explain death to your children but how to
understand and make peace with yourself.

The children's interviews gave supportive evidence that

these particular children understood life's processes of living

68

and dying, that death does occur.

Hopefully this video tape production will present an
example of the type of program which could be utilized to
better inform parents of the need for education of children
regarding death, through the use of other parents expressing
their personal experiences and professionals. Showing that
children verbalize even at an early age about death, proving
that they are aware and need to be informed by responsible
and caring parents in an honest and direct manner about
death occurring in nature around them and regarding the

death of those near and dear to them if it should occur.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1

Release Forms Used

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be
used for the production of this project, to be used in the
completion of the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P. B. S. airing the material.

Child's Name
And Age

 

Parent's Name

 

Address

 

Date

 

Witness

 

Witness

 

70

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Name

 

Address

 

Date

 

Witness

 

Witness

 

71

APPENDIX 2

Signed Release Forms

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name

And Age_§}\m W51); 7"

Parent's Nameifin VW

Address QOZZ abfiSM 9'

Date M /‘f. [9811
v r
0
Witness ,f:22ii- é£:::gdyé::./
/’/’

Witness

 

73

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name

And Age KV‘iS‘I‘L. 9?:de é

 
 

Parent's Name \. . .
em

Address C1023 C(Jaq M81

Date QOML-fir! ngo

Witnesshflz/ @fl/

. i
Witness (JEL- * -/

74

RELEASE FORM
I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded that any audio or video image may be used

for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of

the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

”fiiM/fl/fldy/I

[26 a riné’th'
NaHE;;)ngSA¢T;-i:Natbfiiqu"~

Addressm &

Date ;’/‘/ r—fC)

  
    
  

   
 

material.

 

 

l/‘7 e
‘r' 37/] . .
Witness (fly—<56. 4641/
/, //r

   

Witnes;

7S

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material

which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used

for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of

the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material

for any other project which may

P.B.S. airing the material.

e-y

develop from this taping, such as

Child's Name

,n
And Age 1 0 4.111; L661? Ii fii’

. y I’)
Parent's NamejZe é (" incl: .1 lila- (1124'

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Address 7“, 5’ EQHby‘ccu/ixf

 

 

Date 7- III-5’0
fi 2); " I, :7 /'
Witness ngééééé, §92£§¢5<§£:;._.’-
//é7'

“mew

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

/}

Name /Q'fl‘fl 4;”! film/5444?:

 

Address 3’70é flaw Joan/<7
Dado J;

Date (24,311 [3, Mar/0
7 V I

,7,
Witness (6% 4761...,”
//

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name szmfjéxa/w/W [Jew-“Ea
and Age 10M 7)

Parent's Name ({flzénz’éei é fléhisflfi

Address

 

 

Date T“? A3 17173

Witness (gigéééi ééggirt34:;*’

D/a’

Witness

 

78

RELEASE FORM

1 give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio ro video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name

And Age BOA/my LHILDKFSS 4
1 O at
Parent's Name [AW/LOX m1 M
, J 7 V
Address 7L'7/ dcraoftm/

Date 04.1.1111. /‘-/1 A; 5"?

 

 

j; J ”T
Witness Cfg;>:::;'€h‘é;L//f
/’/’
Witness

79

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of.
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material

for any other project which may develOp from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

 

 

Address

 

Date 7"//’¢FO

;> 2 i /

Witnesswm

80

 

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Name s

Addressmw‘k

balcqs.TE-K

Date 7/[W
Witness (:fiégéZ/ngféégAéawr’

Witness AMA-f

 

 

81

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name RAND." A! CQO‘bVJ

And Age ‘J

Parent's Name F33 H. S flmha

Address glib: quMl/V
'Daucu. Tires

Date 71/) figs

Witness % eggén/
//

 

 

Witness

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develOp from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name

And Age ,1 ._ I u 4’] 3T3.

Parent's Name '1 ,r -—» a.

Address ?&/¢ 6/MCIC

Date 7' l4" 8Q

 

 

‘1 I. :i 7,. Z ' ,
Witness 52/744; Jae/1.5 rag—gr;

*3
WitneW

83

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name
And Age 1 {5 A . u A - $-

 

4 /
Parent's Na'/( ’//' *—
Address {0/7 é/WQ

 

Date 7"]4’ f0
Witness ciggggjz'5522;:7fi/cénhr”

 

84

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Name

 

 

Address HOT-7 1a .zl/trrlaasf/A/t
Oar/at ‘rx 72"1-2 9'

Date - 7—/e./t. £2)

 

. Cj;22227,¢7/¢:D , ,
Wltness L691: "‘5‘“; ya .
/

“’1th

 

85

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has beenurecorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's theSis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name

And AgeB 3h '3(:)r JGA L-

if

-".\ ‘

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Parent 5 Name ’thflfitf €5F~«:n
J "

Address {2157 ’ iF/H'UL [Ta/'5

 

Date 7 we
EL ~1'._..'

 

390 x” ’,

 

 

86

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material

for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

Name {Ame/1% WW

Viét’j W WM
Address pJ/(Mfl/ 7:7 C 94/ ‘3

Date 7/} B/ja

as P.B.S. airing the material.

 

Witness {/‘fij,£/g/ 61g”
Witness; j1~4~fi”;igfl:/Vhfliw 9Cfi>’////

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name WYW

r
And Age fiEEZ,

Parent's NameE§>J.$~VUM;EWVL%§LQQSQCXW\{Z'
7 .
Address (Neal 84%“

Date r7“/é¢" FCD

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Witness ,/f:29’éé;ljzgfléqu;£&ah,/’

 

88

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name ” J

Age 5/

   
 
 

5/,

Parent's Nam;
/= // ’ / r /
Address_:/ZQ/;7/ ? ' / //

Date 7 ’ Fly/"(£79

Witness :ngégi: /é£:7f.¢:§;= 5:

Witness :La Ig’z M441

 

89

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such as

P.B.S. airing the material.

Child's Name
And Age : 200mg.) @7244) - é

Parent's Namef€§éizaaégfi;zggbmuzgg

Address 57jflq737/471Lé/Chz522312
paler/3, C/é/fl-O I

Date 7- /§/')70

Witness ciigjé:v flég:;‘jbé:;garw
r17

 

 

90

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's theis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develOp from this taping, such

as a P.B.S. airing of the material.

Child's Name a Agemfluqfifix.///yf..z{/’:z.c5

 

'\

/ ' , I .' . .-
Parent's Nameagjvgc/ 6C,’f%./}m;

 

é' ~-’ // /- f .
Address /( _L/f V' -: if \‘rzj/‘rf? fog

 

Date Q7//N , W/

Witnesséivcf£2?// 57éL::—7€;<_/’

A /0

Witness ‘5‘\

 

91

RELEASE FORM

I give my permission for the use of any of the material
which has been recorded, that any audio or video image may be used
for the production of this project, to be used in the completion of
the master's thesis for Michigan State University.

I also give my permission for the use of this material
for any other project which may develop from this taping, such

as P.B.S. airing the material.

Name Q [4 giz/ .-/:' 4'12": my

'1‘ , 'r, _ t L, 1:7: ’ ‘2.’ ’
Addre S S V ,,'/,//, / {Ida 71/ '2 4,9,, («(757
/

 

Date CQC'9//G7c7
/

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Witness,5E:2£é2::aié::%;;AZLL,/'
’1-

Witne

92

APPENDIX 3

Type of Equipment Used

APPENDIX 3

Type of Equipment Used

Camera - R. C. A. TK 76B
Video Recorder - Panasonic 9400
Mikes -
Hand He 1 d - Ele_c.t_r,o_vo 1 cc 6 3 5
Tie Tacks - Sony mike ECM SO

Electrovoice C090

94

APPENDIX 4

Questions For The Children

APPENDIX 4
*
Questions for the Children

Hi,what is you name?

How old are you?

Do you have a pet?

Have you ever had a pet die?

What does it mean to die?

Have your parents told you about death? What did they say ?
Are you sad when someone dies? Why?

Were you sad when you pet died? Why?

Can people come back to life after dying? Why or why not?
If you hold your breath for a very long time what will happen?
Why?

Have you ever seen anything dead? What?

How can you tell ifsomethingis dead?

How can you tell if a plant is dead?

Didjmnnrguinea pig die; at school? What happened to it?

What did they do to the pet after it died?

1:
These questions were asked but not particularly in this order.

APPENDIX 5

Questions Used For All The Adult Interviews

APPENDIX 5

Questions used for all the adult interviews

How would you as a parent handle explaining death

to a child? Your children?

Donny: Since you have been fortunate not to have
experienced a death of a love one, someone close to your
family have you given any thought as to how you would handle
the situation with your children?

Donny: In our society it is common for people,
especially males to conceal their emotions, especially grief,
how do you as a professional football player and father feel

about expressing emotion, especially grief ?

How many children do you have and what are their

ages?

Carol: You have recently experienced the death of

two grandparents how did you handle this with your children?

Mary Jane: Did you take Bunny to the funeral home?

98

APPENDIX 6

List Of Cut-A-Way Shots Needed

APPENDIX 6

List of Cut—A-Way Shots Needed

Father and son walking down the path to the park

The same walk only looking at plantsand etc. along the way
(total time needed 2 mins.)

Father and son walking from the park down the path.
Children playing at the play ground
a) close up of faces zoom out to get a group
b) shot of group and zoom in on one face

Sun through the trees

Shot of sun throughthe trees pan and zoom out to get children
on play gorund.

Full shot of play ground then zoom into tree tOps with sun coming
through

Shot out of focus (soft focus) on a leaf and focus and pan to
children playing.

Shots of Pat for interivews (head on) across shoulder)

Shots of Jack for interview (head on) across shoulder)

100

APPENDIX 7

Scenes to be shot at remote site

10.
11.

12.

APPENDIX 7

Scenes to be shot at remote site

Interview - Pat 6 Carol
Interview - Pat G Donny
Interview - Courtney 8 Jack

Interview - Janie 6 Jack

Cut-a-ways for all of the above

Jack - with four (4) year olds
Jack - with five (5) year olds - change location
Jack - with six (6) year olds - change location

Jack 6 son walking up the path to the park
Jack 6 son walking away from park down to the path

One more trip coming back to the park - This needing to
be 2 min. long.

Dr. Evans walking and talking as he comes up the path
towards the park.

102

APPENDIX 8

Outline Of The Program

APPENDIX 8

Outline of the Program

AUDIO

 

v.0. Dr. Miller
Jack Crosby

V.O. Dr. Miller
Jack Crosby

Pat Barrett

V.O. Dr. Miller
Jack Crosby

Pat Barrett

Jack

V.O. Dr. Miller
Dr. Evans

Jack

VIDEO

 

Father and son walking towards the
playground down the path.

Interview between Jack and the four
year olds.

Cut-a-way of children in the park
Jack interviews Mary Jane Childress
Pat Interviews Donny Anderson
Cut-a-way of children at the park
Jack talking to the five year olds.
Pat interviewing Carol Watkins

Jack interviewing Courtney Watkins
(Carol's 6 year old daughter)

cut-a-way of the park
Dr. Evan’s talk
Combination of ages 4, 5 and 6.

Father walking down the path with son
away from the park.

(Credits over the walk of father 8 son.)

104

APPENDIX 9

Dr. Miller's Transcription 6 Questions

APPENDIX 9
Dr. Miller's Transcription & Questions

QUESTION: Should death be explained to children? And why?

DR. MILLER: It's just something about reality that children
need to know about, just like anything else.

QUESTION: When should they be told?

DR. MILLER: When ever it comes up. No minimal age before which
to talk about death or dying needs to be avoided. Child-
ren at ayoung age have a limited ability to understand the
concept of death but except for that limitation there is
no reason not to talk with children about death at any age.

QUESTION: Should parents wait until there is a death in the
family before they discuss it?

DR. MILLER: Not necessarily, children are aware of death in their
everyday lives from a very early age they are aware of the
death of insects and animals in their environment and they
see peOple die on television and read about it in stories.

QUESTION: Who is responsible and who should explain death to
a child?

DR. MILLER: If parents want to instill their feelings and values
about death into their children, then they ought to take
the responsibility for talking about death with their
children themselves, otherwise their children will formu-
late their attitudes based on the attitudes of other people
that they encounter.

QUESTION: How much should a parent tell a child? How much should
be brought up? How much should be left out? How detailed
should you get with a child?

DR. MILLER: Limitations are only based on the child's ability to
understand--small children have very limited ability to
apprehend abstract concepts--conseqently small children
tend to more concerned about physical realities of death,
they may be able to understand death more in terms of the
fact that someone doesn't breath or walk or talk any more
rather than abstract concepts about cession of existance
for example.

106

107

QUESTION: At what age do you think a child becomes aware of death?

DR. MILLER: At a very early age, by two or three years old children
have some awareness of death, again at that very young age
the child is only aware of death in a very concrete way.

QUESTION: How do parents start telling acflfijtlabout death? About
what death means?

DR. MILLER: Sometimes a parent can explain death by example. Again
referring to the dead things that a child has seen in his
environment, dead plants or insects or animals.

QUESTION: Better to start with these sort of things rather than
a human?

DR. MILLER: .Well if there has been a death of someone that the
child has known, that certainly can be an example that a
child can understand.

QUESTION: Do you think by the age of six a child is pretty aware of
what death is? Do you think they are aware of what death
means.

DR. MILLER: Certainly, again the ability of that child to think
abstractly, concepts of finite existence are too abstract
for a child of that age, but the idea that someone is no
longer alive and is buried at a certain place and doesn't
walk, talk or breath any more is something that a six year
old can well understand.

QUESTION: What about parents who don't want their children exposed
to the subject of death: What does this do to a child.

DR. MILLER: The child will be exposed to the topic by his ordinary
everyday experiences. If parents are reluctant to discuss
the subject they will simply transmit the fact to the child
that they are anxious and uncomfortable with the topic and
thereby transmit their own anxieties and discomfort to the
child. The child may at that point feel that there is
something to be afraid of without knowing exactly what
and his fears andfantasiesnmy'cause him to become more
distressed than he is likely to be with a matter of fact
explanation of the realities of what death is about.

QUESTION: Is it hard for children to accept the concept of death?

DR. MILLER: Not at all. Death is a matter of fact reality and it
is something about this world to learn about like many
other things it is treated by most children in a very
matter of fact and direct way without fear or apprehension
as long as they are not exposed to the subject by people
who are fearful and apprehensive themselves.

108
DR. MILLER: America grew up as a frontier society, and a youth

oriented culture. Our cultural values were predicated

on the assumption that things were always growing and
getting better. These values are not easily reconcilable
with concepts of loss, death and cessation of existence.
Consequently of existence. Consequently our culture has
tended to deny death as a reality and not deal with it at
all. Consequently when death does intrude upon someone's
awareness it often tends to be rather traumatic rather

than viewed as something that is natural. Inevitably

and simply a part of reality of existence. These

attitudes tend to be transmitted to children in that
parents who are anxious or fearful of death or who avoid
the subject altogether transmit their anxieties and teach
also to deny the reality of death. This has many determin-
tal consequences the most serious of which is the feeling
of omnipotence and feeling of mortality that many Americans
have. Consequently many Americans do not take care of their
physical health as they might, for to do so would require

a recognition that if they do not take care of them then
death might be more imminent and ultimately will occur

no matter what they do.

APPENDIX 10

Suggested Books and Audiovisual Programs

On the tOpic of Death

APPENDIX 10

Suggested Books and Audiovisual Programs
On The Topic of Death
(BOOKS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN 4-12)
Armonthy CI: Fifteen and I Don't Want to Die. Scholastic, 1974.
Bartioli J; Nonna. Harvey, 1975.
Bauer MD: Shelter from the Wind. Seabury, 1976.
Cleaver B, Cleaver V: Grover. Lippincott, 1970.

Corley EA: Tell Me About Death, Tell Me About Funerals.
Grammatical Sciences, 1973.

De Paola T: Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs. Putnam, 1973.
De Regniers BS: Boy, the Rat and the Butterfly, Atheneum, 1971.
Dobrin A: Scat. Scholastic, 1973.

Farley C: The Garden Is Doing Find. Atheneum, 1975.

Fassler J: My Grandpa Died Today. Behavioral Publication, 1971.
Feagles AM: The Year of the Dreams Came Back. Antheneum, 1976.
Harris A: Why Did He Die? Lerner, 1965.

Kantrowitz M: When Violet Died. Parents, 1973.

Kennedy R: Come Again in the Spring. Harper 8 Row, 1976.

Klein 5: The Final Mystery. Doubleday, 1974.

Koch R: Goodbye, Grandpa. Augsbury, 1975.

LeShan E: Learning to Say Goodbye; When a Parent Dies.
MacMillan, 1976.

Miles M: Annie and the Old One. Little, Brown, 1971.

110

111
Moody A: Mr. Death: Four Stories. Harper 6 Row, 1975.
Simon S: Life and Death in Nature. McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Slote A, Mather P: Hang Tough. Avon, 1975.
Smith DB: Taste of Blackberries. Scholastic, 1976.
Stein SB: About Dying. Walker, 1974.
Stevens C: Stories from a Snowy Meadow. Seabury, 1976.
Viorst J: The Tenth Good Thing About Barney. Atheneum, 1975.
Warburg SS: Growing Time. Houghton, 1969.
White EB: Charlotte's Web. Harper 6 Row, 1952.
White P: What Happened to Auntie Jean? Regal, 1976.
Zim HS, Bleeker S: Life and Death. Morrow, 1970.
Zolotow C: My Grandson Lew. Harper 8 Row, 1974.
AUDIOVISUAL SUGGESTIONS (YOUNG CHILDREN)

Buttons and Her Family. Filmstrip/cassette. Miller-Brody

Productions, Inc., 342 Madison Ave. Dept. 77, New York, 10017.

David and His Grandfather. Filmstrip/cassette. Miller-Brody
Productions, Inc., 342 Madison Ave. Dept. 77, New York, 10017.

Day Grandpa Died, The. Film, 11 1/2 minutes. BFA Educational
Media, 2211 Michigan Ave., PO Box 1795, Santa Monica, 90406.

In My Memory. Film, 15 minutes. National Instructional Tele-
vision Center, Box A, Bloomington, IN 47401.

Playing Dead. Filmstrip/cassette. Guidance Associates, 757
Third Ave., New York, 10017.

SELECTED B I BLI OGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anthony, 8., The Child's Discovery of Death. London: D. Paul,
Trench, Trubner and Co., LTD., 1940.

Anthony, S., The Discovery of Death in Childhood and After.
New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1972.

Berg,David W., and G. S. Daugherty, "Teaching About Death."
Today's Education 62:46, 1973.

 

Carr, Arthur C.; Bernard Schoenberg; David Peretz; and Austin
H. Kutscher. Loss and Grief: Psychological Managements
in Medical Practice. New York: Columbia University Press,
1970.

Feifel, Herman, "Attitudes Toward Death: A Psycholgical Per-
spective." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
1969.

 

Feifel, Herman, New Meaning of Death. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1977.

 

Feifel, Herman, The Meaning of Death. New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Co., 1959.

 

Gesell, A. and F. L..Ilg, The Child From Five to Ten. New York:
Harper and Broghers Publishers, 1946.

Gordon, A. K. and D. Klass, They Need to Know: How to Teach
Children About Death. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979.

 

Gorer, Geoffery, Death, Grief and Mourning. New York: Double-
day, 1965.

Grollman, E. A. , Explaining Death to Children. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1967.

Ilg, F. D. and L. Ames, Child Behavior. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1955.

 

Jackson, E. N., Telling a Child About Death. New York: Hawthorn
Books, 1965.

Kastenbaum, Robert, "The Child's Understanding of Death: How

does it develop?" in Explaining Death to Children
E. A. Grollman, 1967.

113

114

Kastenbaum, Robert, "Death and Development Through The Lifespan,"
New Meaning of Death. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1977.

 

Kastenbaum, Robert, "The Kingdom Where Nobody dies", Saturday
Review, December 23, 1972.

Klingberg, G. "The Distinction Between Living and Not Living
Among 7-10 year old children with some remarks concern-
ing the so-called Animism Controversy." Journal of
Genetics and Psychology, 1957.

 

Kulber-Ross, E., On Death and Dying, New York: MacMillian Co.,
1969.

 

Kulber-Ross, E., Questions and Answers 0n Death and Dying. New
York: MacMillan Co., 1974.

Kubler-Ross, E., "The Searching Mind," Today's Education, 1972.
McClure, John W., Death Education, Phi Delta Kappan, 1974.

 

Mead, Margart, Twentieth Century Faithg Hope and Survival. New
York: Harper 6 Row, 1972.

Mitchell, M., The Child's Attitude to Death. New York: Schocken
Books, 1967.

Moller, H. "Death: Handing the subject and affected students in
the schools" in Explaining Death to Children, E. A.
Grollman, 1967.

Nagy, M., "The Child's Theories Concerning Death". Journal
of Genetic Psychology, 1948.

 

Packard, ‘Vance ,.A Nation of Strangers. New York: David
McKay Company, Inc., 1972.

 

Page, H., Playtime in the First Five Years. New York: J. B.
New York: J. B.’Lippincott, 1954.

Parkes, Colin Murray, Bereavement Studies of Grief in Adult
Life. New York: International Universities Press,

Inc., 1972.

Paul, Norman L. and George H. Grosser, "Operational Mourning."
Community Mental Health Journal, I, 1965.

 

Paykel, Eugene 5., Brigitte A. Prusoff, and E. H. Uhlenhuth.
"Scaling of Life Events." Archives of General Psychiaty.
Vol. 25, 1971.

115

Plant, J. S., The Envelope. New York: The Commonwealth Fund,
1950.

 

Praget, J.,The Child's Conceptions of Physical Causality. New
Jersey: *Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1960.

Praget, J., Judgement and Reasoning in the Child. London:
Routledge and Kogan Paul, 1951.

Russell, R. W. , ”Studies in Animism: II. The Development of
Animism." Journal of Genetics and Psychology, 1940.

Schur, Thomas J., "What Man Has Told Children About Death,"
Omega, 1971.

Shoor, Mervin and Mary H. Speed. "Death, Delinquency and the
Mourning Processz, Psychiatry Quarterly, 1963.

Switzer, David K., The Dynamics of Grief. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1970.

Symp 11, Groups for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Death and
Dying. New York: Mental Health Materials, Inc., 1965.

Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1970.

 

Toynbee A., et al (ed.) Man's Concern With Death. New York:
McGraw Hill Co., 1969.

Wahl, C. W., "The Fear of Death" in The Meaning of Death. H.
Feifel, New York: McGraw-Hill Book, Inc., 1959.

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