Hey all! It’s been a long time since I’ve updated here–I’ve been in a cave working away on my second year film! Here it is! It’s about dogs and friendship.
It was a tough story to crack and a long time in the making, but it was worth it and I learned a lot! Hope you enjoy it!
“It ran away.”
No. That’s not fair.
It’s dead. It’s not coming back. Don’t do that to a child. Death is really important to understand.
YES they might be heartbroken over it but you need explain the truth to them as best you can depending on their age. It will help them understand loss.
I learned about death from an early age watching lions rip apart buffalo on animal planet. That bitch is DEAD. lol.
When my cheap ass fish would die, they where dead. They went up to “fishy heaven”. When one of my cats died, it was dead. It went to “kitty heaven”. My mom used to read me a book about how things that die go to heaven. I was sad but my tiny, imaginative child brain could grasp the concept of my animals going to a “happier” place because they were sick.
I just don’t see why or how lying is better other than to protect their little feelings. No one wants to see their child sad but like I said before, I think it’s important to understand loss. Kids get hurt, it happens, it prepares them for adult life.
I’m no parenting expert and I know there are plenty of reasons I wouldn’t understand as to why people think lying would be better. This is all just a pet peeve of mine.
Okay so I’m a mortician-in-training and, right now, I’m taking the required thanatology class which is all about death, dying and bereavement. Our most recent readings were all about children and how to help them make sense of the loss and separation of a loved one. Apparently, most adults seem to think children don’t grieve but they do. Children essentially have seven stages of grief: shock, alarm, disbelief, yearning, searching, disorganization, and resolution. Their grief is harder to understand and assess because they have neither the vocabulary nor life experience to easily express their feelings and needs. A child’s belief structure and how they respond to death is determined by their age/developmental level, the manner of the death, and their relationship with the deceased.
Birth – 2 yrs: only non-specific distress reactions
2-5 yrs: don’t understand the permanence of death; concerned about physical well-being of deceased; not capable of cognitive reciprocity; may want to see and touch deceased’ repeatedly asks same questions about deceased; may act as if death never happened or in a regressive manner; may experience guilt (like, if they once said something like “I wish so-and-so would go away forever, they might think they caused the death)
6-9 yrs: more complex understanding; realize death is irreversible and that its universal; find it difficult to believe that death will happen to them (believe it happens only to older people); death can be personified and this allows them to run and hide from it; tendency to engage in “magical thinking” (don’t let them do this, its as bad as you lying to them; keep them grounded in the reality of the death), have strong feelings of loss but have extreme difficulty expressing it; often need permission to grieve
9-12 yrs: have cognitive understand to comprehend death is a final event; can understand and accept a mature, realistic explanation of death; short attention spans (they could be sad and grieving one moment and laughing joyfully the next, and someone could see that and negatively comment on it. Like, “how can so-and-so be acting like that?” This can intensify their already fluctuating emotions and present feelings of guilt and low self-worth); their vocabulary is advanced enough to express their feelings but they may not want to talk about what’s bothering them (they’ll let it build up and manifest in behavioral problems); interest in the physical aspect of death and what happens after; may imitate decreased’s mannerisms
13-18 yrs: understand the meaning of death; realize its irreversible and happens to everyone; normal puberty will intensify grief by adding to already conflicting emotions; often put in position of being the protector, comforter, caregiver (feel they must comfort others t their wen emotions are suppressed; they’ll look find on the outside but be falling apart inside); experience conflicting feelings about death (try to overcome fears by confirming control of their mortality; risk taking behavior); males are more likely to express grief in aggressive behaviors while females need comfort, to be held and reassured
There’s basically 10 rules:
Tell them ASAP: its important to start with what they know about death and then expand on that; be gentle and trustful; tell them in a comfortable, safe and familiar place and make sure its in language they’ll understand; never assume they understand the way you do
Be truthful: kids can sense dishonesty ok?! So don’t create lies to protect them; don’t make up stories that’ll have to be changed later on cause that only confuses them and promotes emotional instability; don’t withhold information either (within reason, see #3), place emphasis on the facts, and avoid euphemisms (i.e., “passed away”, “departed”, “went away”, “got sick” (they’ll associate illness and death go hand-in-hand and may think a common cold will kill them), etc)
Share only details they’re ready to hear: truthfulness should be balanced with their readiness for details (like, tell them someone died in a horrible auto accident but maybe not say they were decapitated and their head flew off down the highway in the process); children with actualize a crisis like an adult; its not uncommon for them to ask about a death later in life and that provides the opportunity to deliver info that wasn’t previously shared (i.e., the decapitation)
Encourage expression of feelings: a child will experience stages of grief very similar to those of adults (adults typically follow the Kubler-Ross 5 stages while kids have 7, seen above) and they rely on adults for permission to “feel” loss; best way is for them to learn is to hear and watch adults because they get their understanding of grief through their senses; its not unusual for them to go up to people and just make a statement like “My dad died” cause they want to see how that person will react and give them a clue as to how they should react, so its important for adults to “feel” their grief in the presence of the child; explain why you’re sad and reassure them that its okay for them to feel sad and cry and that its okay if they aren’t
Take child to the funeral: seeing is believing; they should be given the option to view the body but don’t force them; a funeral can be a positive experience but their level of involvement in the funeral process should be their individual decision; give them the choice as to the extent of their involvement
Take child to the cemetery: it can be comforting to them to know where the body is buried and how it got there; it can also help them direct their grief at an appropriate object (this lessens emotional disorganization), and it lessens the child’s chances of denying or avoiding the death
Let them tell others about death: adults “talking over” kids creates anxiety; when the child can explain it to another person, in their own words, they feel more in control and have a greater understanding; let them speak!
Encourage talk of the loss: this allows feelings to be expressed and incorrect ideas about any aspect of the loss to be corrected
Be available to answer questions: you need to answer each question as sincerely and accurately as possible; understand that some can’t be answered but simply being available is important; and be patient cause they will ask the same question repeatedly
Never tell them how they should or shouldn’t feel: you don’t like it when people do it to you, so don’t do it to kids; they should be encouraged to express any feeling and they should feel accepted for it; being told “not to feel” a certain way leads to emotionally “playing dead” and that’ll create repression, which creates interpersonal conflicts in later life due to inability to communicate emotions
This was a super interesting read.
“Their grief is harder to understand and assess because they have
neither the vocabulary nor life experience to easily express their
feelings and needs.”
The amount of lesbians who know that they’re lesbians from a young age versus the amount of gay men who know that they’re gay from a young age shows a staggering difference in that most lesbians take way longer to realize that they’re gay.
Girls are told that dating men is supposed to be hard and essentially unfulfilling. That it’s normal to expend emotional and sexual labor without receiving anything or feeling anything in return. Girls are told that their attraction to men and relationships with men should be difficult and sometimes feel forced because men are so emotionally lacking or otherwise “hypermasculine”.
Realizing that you don’t like men because you’re gay versus just feeling emotionally exhausted or unable/unsure of how to “please” men is part of the reason why compulsory heterosexuality is so damaging. It forces many girls to continue to date men and to keep trying to feel attraction to them long after they’ve realized that there’s nothing there—particularly blaming themselves for the reasons why relationships with men don’t work out instead of thinking it’s an indicator of being gay, which most (though of course not all) gay men are able to recognize as an initial indicator.
i dont think american filmmakers realise how huge london is, because sure you have the london eye and houses of parliament but when you say ‘london has fallen’ what??? so the nandos in catford is in flames? the tesco in peckham has descended into chaos? wtf??
And even if Peckham Tesco goes down you’ve still got the Lewisham one open 24 hours, yeah you’re in trouble on a Sunday evening but even in a survival situation you can probably hold out till Monday because all the local takeaways would still deliver, no one can stop those guys and no one should try
yeah and making it a little serious for a second, the city has such a historical/cultural expectation of being (or at least appearing) resilient in response to destruction that these portrayals are not realistic at all.
If you talk to people who were in London on 7/7 I feel that they use very different language about their experience, vs. people who were in New York City for 9/11. The brush with destruction is not portrayed as a life-changing experience, if that makes sense. The expectation is that the city has to keep moving. That obnoxious “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster (now a meme) was actually designed and printed in readiness to be posted everywhere if London actually fell to Nazi occupation. the expectation was that “descent into chaos” would let everyone down.
Like, in the London Blitz people made “not giving a shit as the city is gutted around you” into an art form.
this lady would make a great reaction image for drinking truth tea in the wake of drama:
like look at these guys here
“oh ffs that was my BUS”
I mean this guy is just delivering the milk like
TREVOR I DON’T THINK YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE GONNA CARE IF YOU’RE A LITTLE LATE
or this extremely safe community policing
“remember girls you need TWO policemen to go past the unexploded bomb”
or this
“hey Bridezilla your window fell off” “fuck off Helen this is my SPECIAL DAY”
or
“guys you’re supposed to be – guys pay attention”
or “Hey what should we do we are literally being bombed right now” “idk go hide in the tube??” “but it’s the kids’ bedtime” “yeah, but like… bombs”
“wait I’ve got a plan, we go to the tube and then…”
“ok so … so we’ve literally just tied the children to the train tracks” “shh…. they’re sleeping…. they’re safe now”
Anyway it’s not like Londoners are super brave or anything, it’s just that on the one hand there might be giant alien sea dragon robot tsunamis smashing the recognizable landmarks, but on the other hand they gotta make rent
