{"id":1527,"date":"2013-05-24T15:05:11","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T05:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2013-05-24T15:05:11","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T05:05:11","slug":"death-and-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1527","title":{"rendered":"Death and Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Francesca:<\/strong>
\nWhat do atheists tell their children when the children show fear of dying?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nMuch the same as believers, I’d say.
\n
\nI’d say this because the idea of an afterlife does little to mitigate the fear of death, and in fact appears to exacerbate it. I can claim this empirically, because studies<\/a> have found that fear of death is positively correlated with religiosity in multiple countries and religions, and anecdotally, because stories of people’s lasting fear of Hell<\/a> are all over the place. Even if you’re a believer, to comfort a child using your religion you have to leave out parts of the doctrine your religion would consider essential and focus only on Heaven, and you’ll still probably instill lifelong fears.
\n
\nSo once religious parents try the Heaven thing and find later that their children are still afraid, they have to continue to comfort the kids in other, secular terms, which is what atheists do from the outset. There are plenty of approaches to this, including but not limited to the following:
\n
\n– Emphasise that death is a long, LONG way off for children, and those who love them will help them to live for as long as possible.
\n– Say that whatever suffering and stress there is in this life stop at death, and the deceased no longer have the same pains or cares.
\n– Honour those who have died, from close relatives to long-gone war heroes to household pets, to show that those who die are not forgotten and stay with us in real ways.
\n– Distract, distract, distract. Provide comforts not related to death, like hugs and hot chocolate, and activities and structure to get life started again. It won’t take the problems away, but it will give the kids a chance to work through the issues in their own time without getting too emotionally involved.
\n
\nThe fact of death is a bitter pill for everyone to swallow, and some are younger than others when it first touches their lives. Religion does not make it easier in the long run, it simply allows an amount of temporary denial. It’s not easy for anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Francesca: What do atheists tell their children when the children show fear of dying? Answer by SmartLX: Much the same as believers, I’d say. I’d say this because the idea of an afterlife does little to mitigate the fear of death, and in fact appears to exacerbate it. I can claim this empirically, … Continue reading “Death and Children”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-death"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-oD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}