Beast Mode is Slate’s pet advice column. Have a question? Send it to beastmode@slate.com.
Dear Beast Mode,
Our cat died about a month ago, and my flaw of always being painfully honest extends to my children, so I told them, “Our cat, Elfy, died yesterday. We won’t see her anymore. … She is being buried in a garden with friends.” We aren’t religious so we are just describing death as not being there anymore. I didn’t look up how to talk to young children about death before doing so and now I’m regretting that because my 3-year-old daughter brings up Elfy’s death to me every single day (not hyperbole) by asking, “Did our cat die?” The damage is done so, I can only ask, how long will this continue? Do children ever really understand death?
—Nine Lives and a Million Questions
Dear Nine Lives and a Million Questions,
“Do children ever really understand death?” is a mild departure for Beast Mode, which has so far tackled issues relating to cat toothpaste and dog booties. I didn’t expect to confront such a profound existential quandary until at least week five of this pet advice column, but I will try my best to help.
First, allow me to extend my condolences. I know your concern is with your daughter and her reaction to Elfy’s death, but I’m sure it must have been difficult for you, too. An animal’s passing is the closest many of us will come to living in a Victorian novel, where dying is commonplace and often occurs at home. Corporeal errands like burying the dead may overshadow emotional ones, and without access to foggy moors on which to brood, coping isn’t a given. I hope you had time to say goodbye to your buddy.
You did the right thing by being honest with your daughter. “Children need to hear truth,” Abigail McNamee, a professor of child development at City University of New York’s Lehman College, tells me over email. “This is helping them understand something about life. It is meeting a cognitive need.”
Because this is such a sensitive issue, I am happy to further outsource my advice to Fred Rogers. Show your daughter the 1970 episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, “Death of a Goldfish.” While you may think you were blunt about death, you were merely following Rogers, who tried and failed to revive a goldfish before burying its remains in the yard. It’s its own little Victorian novel, one that is wrapped inside a cozy cardigan.
Frankness isn’t a flaw, and it will help your daughter in the long run that she doesn’t have to untangle a knot of metaphors and tall tales in order to conceptualize death. All the world’s religions and philosophies have struggled with this very issue, so I wouldn’t fret about your daughter experiencing similar troubles at such a young age. She’s thinking this through, and her incessant questioning is likely part of the process.
Don’t underestimate how confusing this is. “I do not think a child can understand why death is necessary,” McNamee says. The cat used to be there every day, but now it’s not. That’s wild! Your daughter has a right to demand answers, and it’s not her fault that she currently lacks the faculties to vary her line of questioning beyond, “Did our cat die?” According to McNamee, this “seems to be an attempt to understand something that must seem impossible.”
There is no one thing you can say to satisfy her seemingly single-minded curiosity. “It will likely keep coming up,” McNamee says, “perhaps in different ways and at different times: bedtime, in the car, at the checkout counter at the supermarket. This repetition is essential for a child.” She suggests providing context for your daughter’s own question. For example: You keep asking me this to be sure … and that’s OK. It still seems as if it is not possible that Elfy is not with us.
A pet’s death, McNamee explains, can be “a time when a child feels that they have no power,” and you may want to try to help her restore a sense of control. McNamee suggests “planning something that seems to honor the animal that died.” Make a list of things you liked about Elfy, or write a story about an Elfy moment you both remember.
“What is important,” McNamee says, “is to be available physically, emotionally, and with some sense that your power in a child’s life is to keep trying to make sense of what a child needs.” Sometimes, they need to ask a question about the cat dying, even if you’ve already answered it a thousand times.
