Last year for Hanukkah, my then 6-year-old niece received
two parakeets from her nanny, Marina. Who, incidentally, had 
neglected to
mention the live animal gift to my sister. After some behind the scenes negotiating,
it was agreed that the birds would live in the nanny's apartment and my niece,
Erika, could visit Blueberry and Lemon whenever she liked.
This worked out fine for 6 months or so, until the birds, in
rapid succession, died.
Marina couldn't bring herself to tell Erika. She told Erika
the birds were at the vet and would be home soon. This went on for well over a
week. Marina wanted to secretly replace the birds with doppelgangers. My sister
got increasingly frustrated, and finally told Marina if she didn't tell Erika
my sister would tell her herself. Which is what ended up happening. Erika was
distraught.
I don't blame Marina for being so hesitant to break Erika's
heart. No one wants to deliberately make a child cry, which is what you're
basically doing when you tell him or her that a pet has died.
But it's a lesson that has to be learned. Hopefully, the
closest most kids will come to death is through a pet rather than a relative.
My kids are still a bit young for this; at 3 and 4 they've experienced
plenty of death through the waters of their fish tank. But rather than cry,
they argue over who gets to flush the little guy down the toilet.
Christy Oglesby writes of the death of her son's beloved
guinea pig on CNN. Her concern wasn't with how much grief her son would feel,
it was with when he would feel that grief: during three important tests at
school. She was able to keep the pet's death a secret through some very careful
manipulation (unexplained power outage in the boy's room, unexpected
tv-watching at night), and when she did tell her third-grade son two days after
the fact, he thanked her for holding off on the news.
I've written before of how much I hate lying to my kids, but
I'm not sure where this fits in. Isn't omission of fact just as much of a lie
as omission of truth? Our kids need to learn of life and death, but when? Erika
still cries over the untimely death of Marina's dog, Chavi, last summer, while
my 4-year-old son Declan simply speaks of it matter-of-factly. Neither of them
batted an eye when their great-great-Uncle Bob died around the same time.
Perhaps it's just what's familiar to the kids, who and what
they see every day that hold the closest place in their hearts.
Have you had to break the news of a pet or loved one to your
kids? How did you handle it? How did they?
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