Bluebond-Langner, M; Clemente, I; (2021) Children's views of death. In: Hain, R and Goldman, A and Rapoport, A and Meiring, M, (eds.) Oxford Textbook of Palliative Care for Children. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

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Abstract

Death is very much a part of the everyday thoughts of children. It is part of the games they play, the stories they hear, and the videos they watch. Sadly, for some children it is also part of their everyday lives—their lived experience in the face of a life-threatening illness, war, violence, or natural disaster. Starting from the position that a child is a sentient, social, emotional, spiritual being embodied in a biological organism we look at how children’s views develop, and how they are manifest in art, play, and conversations with family, friends, and professionals. We see children as active agents in their worlds—interpreting the behaviour of others and acting on the basis of those interpretations. Children see, sense, and notice, and correspondingly, register and make inferences from what they observe inside and outside of themselves. We attend not only to age and stage of development, but also to the dynamic relationship between age, stage, and experience as they come to bear on the children and their worlds at given points in time. Working from this perspective we explore children’s views of death and dying in a variety of situations, from a variety of perspectives—cognitive, cultural, social, and emotional—as a first step in developing guidance for talking with children who are themselves ill and dying, and their siblings. We address three questions and offers suggestions for talking with ill children and their siblings about death: 1. What do children know and understand about death and dying? / 2. Where do children’s ideas about death and dying come from? / 3. How should we address their questions and concerns on this most fundamental question of human existence? The chapter draws on an extensive review of the literature on well and ill children’s views of death as well as the co-authors’ ethnographically based research with ill children, their parents, siblings, and clinicians involved in their care and treatment; highlighting the social nature of death and dying

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