Explaining Suicide to A First Grader
I never thought I'd need to talk to my 6 year old about suicide. But on the bus ride home this afternoon, some of the older students told her about a classmate of theirs who is believe to have committed suicide this morning. So, because I'm not afraid to tell my children the truth about life, we talked about what she heard. I didn't try to distract her from the story, leaving her with unanswered question. Instead, I used the opportunity to talk to her about broken hearts. A while ago, after the Sandy Hook school shooting, she wanted to know why someone would want to hurt other people and then kill themselves. At that time, I told her about broken hearts and that when you combine a broken heart with a "broken brain" (my overly simplified phrase for mental illness), it leads some people to do bad things, things that hurt others. Today, I used those same words to describe what happened to Rebecca (I'm not saying she was mentally ill, but if she did commit ...