Parenting: Managing the transition to college

We organised a movie night over the weekend and we chose Firehouse Dog.

which they both loved.

It is rated PG, so we thought it would be fine.

However, there's quite a lot of discussion of potential death from fire.

The first night after watching it, her four-year-old had a dream that I, her dad, died in a fire.

She didn't seem disturbed necessarily by this dream, which I tried not to take offence at.

And then yesterday, she was talking a lot about people dying and then coming back to life.

I'm actually not sure what she really understands what dying means.

My wife keeps shutting her down every time she mentions death or dying.

But I feel that we should discuss the concept with her so that she understands what's the best course of action.

Oh, I mean, it's so like we've talked about this before and it's just so typical and developmental between the ages of four and six years old.

So some kids will do it right when they're four and something like a movie or a story can trigger it.

But she was always going to become fascinated with death within this window of four to six years.

They always do.

But they become fascinated with the concept or idea of death without any understanding of its permanence.

So this little one is doing exactly what I'd expect a child her age to be doing around the idea of death.

You're not going to explain this concept to her in a meaningful way.

She will work her way through it.

You see this with children that they talk.

You see it in their play.

You know, they're playing something.

Everything gets killed and then switch scene.

Everything's back to life again.

Yeah.

Because the permanence of it isn't there.