is it a phase or not??

[kim2485]

hi my daughter she is 5years old and she constantly thinks she is going to die. im not sure if this could be a phase of trying to understand dying or weather she has a problem someone please help as i dont no what to do and its getting very fustrating im really worried about her.

[sara3]

I guess the theory of death gets through at about that age, but you should reassure her that people generally only die when they are really sick (not coughs or colds, or chicken pox.. or anything she may know of) or really old (I think you could skip the horrific accident scenario!). point out that she is very young (as are you and daddy, etc) and that none of you are that poorly.

has something happened to trigger this?

[tinkerbell23]

i went to doc at one point myself as i was getting soo worked up over this myself..and he said to me its very common happens to mostly everyone at somepoint and hes eve had kids who are waking up and opening all the room doors to check on everyone ...so i think it may b a phase!! poor wee girl!! AND poor u- hope itl pass xxxxxx

[lil75]

Is this affecting her day to day activities? Is it making her clingy and how long has it been going on for? My son broke his arm acouple of months back, he's 11, and I think he came to the realisation that people do get hurt or worse, killed/die, the result, he started having panic attacks, it affected us both a lot. I took him to the doctors and we were refered for councilling which starts tommorow, Maybe you should weigh up the situation and decide what to do for the best for your daughter, I hope she overcomes it soon x

[crisgal]

my little boy went through this and i didn't know how to help him. After assurances from most doctors that it was just a phase, i finally got some help from a brilliant (sadly now retired) health visitor.
She came round and asked him to put all his worries on a piece of paper. He wanted me to leave the room while he did so.
She told me that as he scribbled - with mainly black crayon - he was saying things like: and that's the fire, and that's the volcano; and there's the plane that will crash on our house etc.
Then she asked him what he would like to do with the picture, burn it, bury it?
He decided to fold it up very small, stuff into a old film canister and then he wrapped yards of black tape around and around (so they couldn't get out!). Then he put it in the bottom drawer of my freezer!
It is still there, and as he's now 15 we can laugh about it, but over the following months, he would come and check it were still there and shake the box, saying "Ha! You can't get ne now worries!"

I don't know if we were just lucky but it definitely worked for him. He was back to his old self almost immediately.

Incidently, I found out later on that a school friend's grandad had died and though he wasn't really close to this little lad, it had started him thinking about death and dying.

Good luck x

P.S. Hi lil75 - I have been wondering how your little boy is doing. x

[alfiesgirl]

I am a widdow of 3 children and the subject of death didnt loom its harsh head untill my husband died after a short illness quite unexpectedly and i admit..it is hard to explain. I think that the subject of death should be taught at an early age..not the ins n outs of death but the fact that we all die at some point and heaven etc so the child has no need to fear it..it can be quite traumatising for a child . I have included a link with this reply for you to take a look at ..i hope it helps you and your child in some way., Media URL: http://www.parentingforums.org/frontpage/?p=vB9105
Description: how to approach the subject of death to a worried child of early school.

[tigwig]

I'm so glad to read this, my daughter is exactly the same and she is 5 too. Although she doesn't necessarily think she is going to die herself, she talks about death and heaven and what will happen very regularly. I have no idea why she does it or why yours does either but it must be their age!
My daughter wants to know what's in heaven and actually cries thinking about when we are going to die. She is eventually consoled but not before depressing us!
I don't personally think it is anything to worry about or that there is an underlying problem. I think I can remember being like this when I was younger, worrying about parents dying etc. I am sure that as they both grow up they will realise that they don't need to go through life worrying about dying!
I would just reassure your daughter that she isn't going to die and not really mention that everyone dies at some point because I think with their very overactive imaginations they think that will be very soon. Just talk about it in a normal way and subtly change the subject, its what I do!

[annie0000]

My kids went through this as well, but then they did have 3 close bereavments at a young age - 2 grandparents and an uncle (leaving 2 small kids) and actually attended 2 funerals as we had nobody to leave them with. A neighbour was also widowed and left with two young kids around the same time. They were very concerned that my husband and I were going to die and leave them and this was especially difficult when it wasn't only elderly people in their circle that had died, it was people with little kids like them. I had to weigh up the trauma of having them think that we could die and leave them with the potential dishonesty of telling them that we weren't going to die. I went for the latter. I thought that in the rare event of it happening, the fact that we had died would pobably be more of a trauma than finding out that we had lied to them. So far so good! The other difficulty for me is that personally I don't believe in heaven or any religion, so it is difficult to give them comfort without subscibing to some form of afterlife. We went with guardian spirits in the end. I would go with sara's advice.

[karenmac60]

I went through this when I was around that age and it made my mum sick with worry. I would cry myself to sleep every night and all I could tell her was that I was scared of dying - but what I couldn't explain to her was that it wasn't dying as such - it was what would happen to my favourite toy if I died. I couldn't imagine being separated from it but I didn't want my wee cat to be buried cos she wouldn't be dead! My mum finally figured it had something to do with the toy and she tried taking it off me but that just made me worse so she gave me it back and I got over it after a while by myself - just stopped thinking about it.

[tweenyb]

hi

i am now 29 and very much alive but like your little one i developed a thing about death and panicked about it and constantly queried it. all i can say is that as time went on i grew out of it but i must say that avoiding shows like casualty and the news at a young age would help as it was these tv programmes that put the fear of god into me.... obviously everyone is different.
if you are really worried speak to your gp but generally reassure her and dont ever lie explain that people die but only because they are very very old or very very ill and explain to her that she is healthy and young so she shouldnt worry

good luck and hope it phases out soon xxx