It is often during the elementary years that a child first experiences the death of a loved one – frequently a grandparent or great-grandparent, but sometimes and aunt, uncle, parent or sibling. These times can be very difficult and confusing for us as adults caring for elementary children. Younger children also suffer loss, but they may have an easier time accepting that this is just the way things are. It may be only much later that they revisit and truly comprehend the loss through a process of reflection.
As someone fully engaged with the great work of understanding how the world works, the elementary child is keenly interested in all aspects of death: how it happens, why it happens, what happens after death, in what way the family will commemorate the death, how the various family members will be affected, and much more. The reasoning mind of the second plane wants to understand all this, even as the child may be also suffering emotionally. For the grieving adult, the barrage of questions may be hard to take, and it may even seem that the child cares more about the factual details than about honoring the deceased or appreciating the emotional stress of the adults.
Maria Montessori wrote of a Montessori school in which first and second plane children were together in the same classroom. (She and her collaborators tried many different arrangements before settling on the one that is now our standard practice.) One morning the children arrived at school to find that all the fish in the classroom’s aquarium had mysteriously died. All the children were interested in what had happened, but the younger children would run to tell each new child that arrived at school, “The fish have died!” and then return to their work. The second plane children stood around in hushed groups asking each other, “What happened? Why did the fish die?” and debating the possible causes.
The point is that for the second plane child, understanding how to think about the death is an important part of beginning the emotional process of acceptance, grief and recovery.
Montessori teachers lay a foundation in the classroom for the second plane children’s conversations about death with each other and their parents. In the children’s study of living things, death is presented as a natural process, an inevitable part of each individual organism’s life, without which the larger world of life could not go on. The children become aware of lifecycles appropriate to each kind of living thing. Dead insects and small animals found on the school grounds are marked off and left to return to nature, so that the children can both show respect for and observe nature’s ways. Religious beliefs and customs around the world are a part of the children’s study of society, including beliefs and customs related to death.
Books read together with the child or read alone by the child and discussed with the parent can be very helpful when one is at a loss for words. Three of my favorites are Leo Buscaglia’s The Fall of Freddie the Leaf, Bryan Mellonie’s Lifetimes, and Chuck Thurman’s A Time for Remembering. The Buscaglia and Mellonie books beautifully depict the lifecycle and the great wheel of life and death. Thurman’s book is particularly suitable for discussing the death of a grandparent. In it, a boy finds a beautiful, symbolic way of remembering his grandfather.
John Snyder is an administrator at Austin Montessori School. Follow him onTwitter @jrs1231.
Thank you, John, for bringing this conversation to Mariamontessori.org. So true that close and comfortable intimacy with the life cycles throughout nature, one that includes death as natural and good norm, is a child’s need and right. over the forty-four year history of our school, we have worked through our fair share of loss of parents and children, even a murder-suicide of a mother and father. Being a writer, I have written for our community in response to the shock and anguish. one of my topics for parents is titled “All but the One on Death,” because parents are eager to attend all the meetings except that one. Our task as schools is to help our parents get healthy about death so they.can do the same for their children. For more information on this subject, email robbieb@austinmontessori.com.
This was really interesting – I’ll be sharing this on our school’s facebook page. The book I’ve always recommended is “The Tenth Good Thing About Barney” in which a little boy’s cat passes away, and he thinks of ten good things to say about him at his funeral.
This is an article that particular touched my heart. I lost my son a year ago, on the 17th of July, due to a drunk driver. He left behind and brand new, and newly pregnant wife.
My nieces aged 3 and 4 at the time, and being the typical questioning Montessori kids, wanted to know what happened, and hard as it was, I sat them down and told them the truth, no sugar-candy coating… and they understood, asked sensible questions, and keep Vincent alive through chatter and conforting ME when they can see I am grieving. In fact, my littlest niece, Nitika, woke up at the time of the accident, vomited, and went back to bed… we only found out that same afternoon about the accident. Just how special are these kids I wonder, and how much more depth do they have… I myself wish I had been a Montessori child, not just the kids shoved to the back of the class cos I had a lot to say and teachers in the 70′s in conventional schooling just had no idea what ADD was, and how to deal with the exceptional child and its needs. I am about to lauch an e-mag in South Africa to both present and prospective Montessori parents, called CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE, and would welcome input from your side. Many thanks, Linda