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Give It To Your Kids Straight
It is essential to tell your kids the truth.
I’m not talking about things like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny — keep that magic alive as long as possible.
I mean the big questions they have — death, friendships, human nature — things like that.
It doesn’t matter how much you try to shield your child, they are going to find out the truth one way or another.
Don’t you want the first time they interact with big topics to be with you?
Wouldn’t you want to teach your child yourself, instead of having their information come from Johnny on the school playground?
My son is five, and he started asking about death when he was four. My husband and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. He watched marble races on TV and read children’s picture books.
At such a young age, like many parents, we didn’t want to have a serious talk with him about death. So we tried to give him the brush-off answer — don’t worry about dying, you have a long time before you have to worry about any of that.
But he wasn’t satisfied with that. He knew, even at four, that we weren’t being truthful.