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Hello Uncle Lian, I have been following your articles, and I am confused about an existing matter and would like to ask Uncle Lian for advice.

Since I went back to my hometown to visit a tomb during the Ching Ming holiday, I told my 9-year-old son about the customs of Ching Ming, the process of visiting a tomb, and mentioned the issue of death in passing. The child was more interested in the issue of death, so during his bedtime chit-chat time, we had a few small talk about this issue. Through several chats, especially after returning from the holidays, it was obvious that he was afraid of death, always worried about when we would die, whether it would hurt when we died, where we would go after death, whether there would be another life. I wanted to dispel his worries and tell him that death is a necessary stage for everyone, and because of that we should cherish the present, and that a normal death should be a peaceful death after a certain age, just like falling asleep (after all, I am only 39 years old, both parents are alive, and I have not experienced a big parting, so I cannot tell him more), and that we should stay away from danger in order to To avoid accidents, an accidental death should be more painful. Until yesterday, my child told me "Dad, Dad, I don't want to drink Meng's tea when I cross the Nahe Bridge, I want to remember you guys well, I want to invent immortality pills when I grow up, a total of 10, Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Grandma and others, a total of ten people, all can not die, to always always live." Listening to these words of the child, the old father was very relieved.

Because the child grew up with delicate feelings, this matter has caused him a lot of trouble, every time he is quiet he will have to think, to ask questions. My wife and I discussed the need to properly and systematically talk to the child to avoid his ruminations, disturbing what should be a carefree teenager, but suffering from limited experience do not know how to eliminate his concerns, and face this less friendly but hopeful world.

Reply

You want to systematically talk to your child about the topic of death to allay his concerns. This is an impossible task.

Death is connected to all aspects of life, it is a vast, dynamic, continuously updated and enriched subject, it is not a standard answer that can be found in an encyclopedia and read once, we have to spend a lifetime to understand death. For example, the Qingming Festival, where families gather around a pile of earth to remember their loved ones and perform many rituals, is not at all scientific from a scientific point of view. But it is an important part of Chinese culture, because the people's virtue returns to the thick because of the cautious pursuit of the far end. Knowing our origins and passing on the virtues of our ancestors, we can live with a greater sense of belonging, responsibility and nobility, so Qingming becomes an important cultural event of remembrance, reflection and reunion, without which the Chinese life, family and culture would be incomplete. In some universes you are only born now, in some universes you do different things and have different life choices, and in some universes you are already living in the future. Even if there is only this single universe that we live in now, the atoms that make up us will sooner or later reorganize to create the same one of us if we recombine infinitely, and our lives are replayed once more. The probability of this is of course extremely, extremely, extremely small, but in an infinite world, anything with even a small probability will happen an infinite number of times. You see, with increased knowledge comes a different understanding of death.

But can the idea of infinity ease our fear of death? Probably not, either. Fear of death is a normal human reaction, whether it's a child or an adult. It's only worth fearing when a child talks about death without fearing it at all. When we first learned about death as children, we were all so afraid that we would hold on to sleep, thinking that if we slept we would die, and then we fell asleep when we were too sleepy, and woke up the next morning with a deeper and more accepting understanding of the fear of death. The fear of death exists throughout life, and because of it, we cherish time, health and life, love, and give and forgive. There is no need to be afraid because a child has a normal fear of death.

In this case, the child's reaction is normal, and he still has the goal of researching drugs, but you are the one who is overly anxious. Education anxiety is a common problem for many parents, at all times want to stuff their children with a bunch of knowledge, reasoning and standard answers, do not have to be so plucky, life is often more need to hug, kiss, tease, chat, children need laughter far more than knowledge. It's not that knowledge is not important, but the transmission of knowledge has to be adapted to the situation, the child is interested, asked, then tell him their knowledge in words that he understands, do not understand and do not have to pretend to understand, admit that they do not understand, but also still learning. This is enough, no need to overexert, relaxed. Otherwise, the child is too nervous and stressed, but it is more difficult to experience the beauty of life, the beauty of knowledge.

Have fun.

Lian Yue