Talking With a Child About Losing a Pet

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol, and I’m calling from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hi, Carol. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Carol.

Okay, I’d like to know how parents gently inform their small children that the family pet has passed away in a way that softens the cold hard truth.

Oh, wow.

Have you had to do this?

I haven’t had to personally deploy it, but I have a story to tell about how I was informed as a little kid about a cat passing away.

Oh, please do. So I grew up in the 1960s in Fargo, North Dakota.

So our cat was hit and killed by a car. And I was not in the house at the time. And my brother, Jim, took care of all the details. He found Marvin, our cat, and brought him to the yard and buried him. And then somehow word got to where I was. I was at a lake cabin playing with my cousins. And word got to the lake cabin that something happened and Marvin was gone.

Okay.

So I asked, I think it was one of my aunts who told me this, and I asked her, well, where’s Marvin now? And this aunt just touched my arm and she said he went to Wisconsin.

And so I thought, okay. I was young enough where I bought that, right? I might have been seven or eight. And I thought about it for a while, and I thought, well, okay, I don’t like this. I’m sad, but you know what? He’s somewhere, and maybe I can go visit him. Maybe I’ll ask Mom if we can go visit him, although Wisconsin, from my house in Fargo, Wisconsin seemed like a world away.

She told you that the cat went to Wisconsin.

Right.

Did you wonder why?

Right.

Was he unsatisfied with life in our house in some way? Is it in family?

Right, if he’s in any family, how did he get there? Did he walk? Did he hitchhike?

Okay.

But, you know, I took it at face value and just told myself to get used to the idea that Marvin’s not in the house anymore.

Yeah, and he’s in Wisconsin.

And he’s in Wisconsin.

So the theory is there’s a farm in Wisconsin, and all the pets go there, and they can play to their heart’s content.

Oh.

Yeah.

You know, I remember as a kid being told that my dog Tuffy had gone to a farm. And it comforted me for years, you know, just thinking, well, there is that possibility that she’s out there romping around.

But I think you raise a really good question. At what age, basically, do you start telling a child the truth? Isn’t that the real question here? Or what level of maturity? Because maybe age is irrelevant.

Right, exactly. What level of maturity and how hard would it hit this kid? How hard would the news hit the kid?

So I was a very sensitive little kid.

And you were seven or eight at the time that you lost.

That’s right.

There are different strategies. For example, we had a cat die in the last couple of years. He had terrible kidney disease. We had to let him go across the rainbow bridge, as they say. And we’d had him for a while. And I had to deliver the news to my son, who was 11 or 12 at the time. And it was hard. But I was ready because I had done some reading about it. And I knew that you have to avoid things like telling them what not to do. You shouldn’t say, don’t worry and don’t cry. Let them feel what they have to feel. And if they’re not showing grief, that’s okay, too, because we’re all different. And I couldn’t know what was happening inside him. I had to let him do whatever was happening, and I had to let him have the last word, which for me is hard, as you know, Martha. And also, I had to remember that not everything required a response from me. He might not even have known what to say or how to say it, but it was important that whatever he needed to say, however he had to say it, that he’d get the words out. And so I let him do that, and it worked out.

And then we did something really important, and this is maybe the best thing that I learned how to do, is we built the legend of the cat together. Whopper is now part of our family lore. We talked about the funny things that he would do, the weird little behaviors that we loved. And he’s now part of the legend of our family. And so we made sure not to forget him. And that’s a really important part of the grieving process is to let the child know that just because the animal is gone doesn’t mean that they’re forgotten and that they’re still there in your memories and in your heart. And that’s very comforting.

That’s a lovely thing to do.

Carol, it sounds like part of your question is what is the language that you use? What is the vocabulary? What words do you reach for?

That’s exactly right.

And I’m sure it just depends on the kid, like we just discussed. How much can this kid take and how close were they to the pet?

Right.

When do you say the pet died or was put to sleep or, you know, how do you phrase that?

That’s a really tough one.

Yeah.

And for younger kids, you have to stare away from things like talking about the body and what happens to it. You have to quickly move on to talking about, you know, the emotion side of it or the feeling side of it. Because getting down to where the body goes is hard to explain to a child. So you have to explain that the pet’s time with us here is over. And we gave it a good life. We loved it very much. And it knew that. And it loved us back. And we were lucky to have it as a part of our family.

Carol, I imagine that there are listeners all across the country and around the world who are reaching for their phones or their laptops right now to share their stories and talk about how you do this. Because, you know, it’s a problem that keeps coming up. And I’m really curious what other folks have to say about that. How have you shared the story of a pet dying with your children? Or how did your parents share the news with you? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell the story in email at words@waywordradio.org.

Thank you, Carol, so much for opening up this great topic and sharing your story. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. It’s just a pleasure to meet both of you.

Take care.

Great talking with you, Carol.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.