How does death affect children?
by
Paul O’Brien (aged 12)
Introduction
I was interested in how children are affected by death and how it might change their
behaviour. This could be the death of a pet or a relative - and if it was a relative, how
it might be different if it was a close relative or a distant relative. I was interested in
this subject because I wanted to see if it may play a part in the way that some people I
know behave. I wanted to find out what children thought about their own behaviour
and if they thought it changed them when someone they cared about died. I also
wanted to know what they thought death was.
I looked for what I could find about what other people say about death and children of
my age. I found a study by Robin F Goodman PhD on the NYU Child Study Centre
website. In it he says that “By age 9 or 10 children have acquired a mature
understanding of death. They know that: (1) it is a permanent state; (2) it cannot be
reversed; (3) once you have died your body is no longer able to function; (4) it will
happen to everyone at some time; (5) it will happen to them.”
My research question was ‘How are children affected by death and how does it
change them, and change their behaviour?’
Methodology
I wanted to find out the views of children my age but I realised death is a difficult
subject. So I decided the most ethical way of finding out the information I needed was
to ask permission to talk to the children about it. I designed a short questionnaire
which asked them:
 Have you ever had a pet die? Please tick all that apply.
(cat, dog, hamster, mouse, rabbit, other pet)
 Have you ever had a death in your family? Tick all that apply
(mum, dad, sister, brother, grandma, granddad, uncle, aunt, other relative)
 Would you be willing to talk to me about it?
I handed this out to 160 children of ages 9, 10, 11 and 12 at my school. They filled it
out in class and I collected the results in on the same day. I took the results home and
picked out eight students to interview. In choosing the eight I looked for a variety of
different types of bereavement. I also tried to get people from a variety of different
countries and religions, and to get girls as well as boys. Because my interest in this
topic came from my own experience I decided to focus on people from my own age
group so all my interviewees were from Year 7. Also as death is a difficult subject to
talk about I felt more comfortable talking to people I already knew well because I am
in Year 7.
I interviewed these students three weeks after the survey as it took time to look
through their forms. I did all the interviews on the same day during school time. I was
able to use the ICT suite to make it private so nobody could listen in. Each interview
lasted about 15 minutes. There was a range of questions about different emotions and
different stages of the bereavement. I was trying to make the students as comfortable
as possible, as I knew it was an upsetting subject for them to talk about, I gave them a
choice of taping the interview using a Dictaphone or for them to write the answers
down on an interview sheet.
The findings
Figure 1 shows the results of the exploratory questionnaire in which 145 children
ranging from age 9-12 indicated whether they had experienced the death of a family
member, or a pet, or both, or none. All but one of the children had experienced at
least one death.
Figure 1: Responses to question about whether children aged 9-12 had experienced
death
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Pet
Both
Relative
None
I organised the answers from the interviews into groups and then put these together
into a table so I could compare them more easily. Now I will discuss the answers and
themes of each question in turn. Every one of my interviewees had lost one or more
relatives. Only two of them had lost pets. Most of the relatives or pets had died in the
last 1 - 5 years.
Q1
Can you describe to me how it felt when you found out your relative/pet
had died?
Everyone spoke about their sadness. For those who lost pets it seemed to be just as
hard and upsetting as for someone who had lost a relative like a grandparent. One
person I interviewed said as well as sadness they felt regret as they had not seen the
relative who died for two months.
Q2
How would you say you dealt with the death overall?
There was a mixed reaction here as half my interviewees thought they had handled the
death very well. But the other half told me about the difficulties they had had. One
girl said it took her a month to recover from her experience of death. One boy told me
he cried for a week after the death. Another boy said the hardest part was accepting
his grandparent was dead. “The hardest part was just to get round that granddad was
dead. I used to do nearly everything with him.”
Q3
Who supported you most through the death?
All but one person I interviewed said it was their family who helped them most, and
for most of them their mum and dad were the biggest factor in getting them through
the death. In two cases people found it helpful that their families did not talk about it
much because they knew it would upset them. Although I asked whether they’d had
help from friends or teachers, no-one had gone to those people for support.
Q4
How did they support you?
Two people said they were taken on holiday to take their minds off the death. Another
person said what helped her was “I was told that he was always going to be watching
and that he will always love you.” One girl said she was helped by knowing her
family understood her sadness because they felt the same way.
Q5
What was the hardest part of dealing with the death?
Two people said the hardest part was before the death actually happened but they
knew it was going to. Two others said it was the shock of the death that was the
hardest. One boy found the most difficult thing to deal with was when others
mentioned the death.
Q6
Did anything confuse you about the death?
Those who answered this said that it was understanding why their relative had to die
that was the most confusing. One girl said: “The most confusing thing was that he was
dying cos he was always in a fit state and he wasn’t ready to go.” The other thing that
someone found confusing was that their relative was not going to be there anymore.
Q7
Do you feel that this death has changed you in any way?
Five of the eight interviewees said that it had changed the way they feel about life.
Two of them said they now appreciate life a lot more. “Live each day to the full,” one
told me. Another one said: “You should always be nice to mum and dad because they
will not be there for ever.” Two people said it affected their personality and the way
they behaved for a while. One boy explained that he knew now he could not stay with
one person for a lifetime. “I have to find other people.”
Q8
Has experiencing death taught you anything about life?
People again talked about feeling that you should live life to the full and you
shouldn’t take things or people for granted. Two of the interviewees told me it had
taught them that death comes to everybody. One said: “It taught me that once you’re
born you have to die sometime, young or old.”
Q9
Do you still get emotional or have you recovered?
Five of the eight participants said they still get emotional every now and then when
they’re reminded of the person who died. For three of them the feelings are still quite
strong. One boy whose loss happened a year ago said: “I still get very emotional,
yes.” One girl who lost a very close relative five years ago said that she sometimes
still cries when she’s alone.
Q10 How would you describe death to someone who hadn’t experienced it?
Half of the people spoke about going on to somewhere else after death. They only
thought of death as the end of life in this world. And they thought people were going
somewhere better. One person described it as like sleep. Two people thought about it
from the point of view of those who loved the person who died. “Death is something
that could take your loved ones away,” one boy said. But thinking about the way in
which some people are dying, he also said death can be a relief.
Discussion
I found this research project an interesting subject to look at as it has many different
points where there are themes or a big difference in the answers. The first stage of the
findings that surprised me was on my questionnaire. The results were really eye
opening. 99% of children have experienced either a relative or a pet die before the age
of 12. From the questionnaire I found out 79% have had both one or more relatives
and pets die. This shows how important it is we understand how it affects children.
When I looked at the answers from the interview a lot of the answers were the same.
The eight children I interviewed all talked about their sadness when the death
occurred. One thing that intrigued me was the difference in how long people grieved
as it ranged from one month to five years. But it seemed that this did not depend on
how close they were to the person or pet who had died. It all depended on the type of
person they are. So one person could be as upset by losing their dog as another person
who lost their grandparent.
Another theme was that over half the people I interviewed told me it made them
appreciate life a lot more and want to live it to the full. The majority felt that it had
changed them as a person in one way or another. Not everyone thought that the death
taught them anything. Some did but what they learned was different. Which again
indicates that your experience of death is dependent on you as an individual.
It was strange that the only people the children asked for comfort from was their
family. Everybody said that it was their family and especially their mum and dad that
helped them through this emotional time in their life. I would have expected children
would really get support from their friends, especially as it seems everyone goes
through it.
If I had more time I would have interviewed more people to get a better feeling of
how death affects children. But I did find interviewing people was a lot more useful
than just letting them write their answers themselves.
Conclusion
I set out to find out ‘How are children affected by death and how does it change them,
and change their behaviour?’ What I have discovered is death affects children in all
sorts of ways but when it affects their behaviour it is usually in a positive way.
From my own experience of death I recovered in about six months. That was the time
it took before I stopped getting upset. I went to my family instead of my friends for
support. I think it was because I just didn’t think about going to my friends and maybe
other children are the same. It changed me in a way that I wanted to be kinder to the
people I love. If I had more time I would like to do more research into whether
experiencing death might make some people bully other children as they need a way
to express themselves and their hurt.