Sadly my 9 year old son's pet lizard passed away a couple of days ago. It came on suddenly and we are unsure as to the cause. But these sorts of things are always very hard for kids. Death is an unfortunate reality in this world and I think pets are often a child's first exposure to loss. We held a little burial in the flower bed and bid his friend goodbye. This particular son is not very demonstrative though, and didn't really want a lot of ceremony or to talk much about it, so I have been left with this nagging sense that we didn't do enough to help him deal with this experience. I'd really like to hear from my readers on this one. How have you handled the death of pets with your children? If you have any ideas you would care to share you can post a comment here or send them to me at admin@makessense.com and I'll gather them and repost as a group for others to see. Thanks so much.
We lost our dog, Puppy, about 3 years ago. He was our 1st child, and treated as such. We had him years before our daughter was born. Puppy very suddenly became ill with what we discovered was lung cancer. Within the week we had to put him to sleep. Our the 4yo daughter was devastated to come home without her 'fur brother'to greet her, even though we tried to prepare her as much as possible. A friend gave us the book,"Dog Heaven". It talked about how dogs go to heaven and play while free of pain & God looks after them and they make fluffy beds out of the clouds. To this day, at almost 8, she still looks to the sky and talks about the beautiful fluffy cloud beds that Puppy has made. When we recently sent a balloon to heaven for the anniversary of the death of our dear neighbor, Rachel sent one to Puppy as well, with a special note tied to it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kim...I LOVE the idea of a balloon to heaven. I knew you had done that for your friend, but what a great idea for a child who has lost a pet as well. I'm going to look for that book.
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