Should Children Attend Funerals

 - originally published August 24 2017

Historically   

At the beginning of the last century, when death mostly occurred in the home, it was an accepted part of life.

Everyone experienced loss and mourning as part of everyday life – including small children: the deceased would die at home, then be laid out at home until the time of the funeral. Family life would have to carry on around the deceased person.

It was not considered strange that children were involved and they learned from an early age that death was part of life and needed to be dealt with.

Following the world wars, the funeral service evolved and it became common practice to use chapel of rest facilities provided by the funeral directors. Families did not need to deal with death within the home and children could be ‘protected’ from it. The fashion, it seems, was that children were automatically assumed to be ‘too delicate’ to be involved with funerals and death became a taboo topic.

This still happens today to some extent.

Nowadays   

To return to our original question ‘should children attend funerals?’, the short answer is that parents know their children best, but there are some things that should be considered:

1. Children up to the age of about five do not see death as a permanent thing. Just look at the fantasy and animation they are surrounded by. In my childhood, Roadrunner was squashed in every episode, but jumped up and carried on. In other words, young children do not understand death.
2. Adults need to grieve unhindered themselves and the funeral service can provide important closure and help with the grieving process. My advice: if young children are attending, have a relative or family friend around to help.
3. The expert view is that, if a child expresses a wish to attend, they should be allowed to and encouraged to participate if they want to. It may be something as simple as drawing a picture that can be placed with the deceased.
4. A funeral is an important event and children are quick learners. They learn from people around them, particularly their parents. Hopefully, they will learn that grief is part of life and healthy grieving is normal.
5. If children detect differences in their home life and don’t understand, they sometimes blame themselves or jump to the wrong conclusions. This can lead to problems in later life.

On a more personal note, I took my three young children (4, 6 and 10) to see their deceased granddad in the chapel of rest and then to the funeral. I would like to think that I helped my children understand why we were sad and why things were different at home.

I felt it was important to let them join in the experience and see it as a life lesson, but they were asked first and they were willing.

This was before I joined the funeral service.

All children are different and it’s never a good idea to have hard and fast rules based on age or expert advice. You know your children best.