So last year my DDs friends dad died, unexpectedly of a heart attack. Because of DDs friends age (4) she has handled it quite well - but will openly talk about how her dad went to hospital died and never came back...
This hasn't been a problem - I explained to the girls...
The problem had came since I have been sick. And I've gone to hospital
Dd has been really worried that I am going to die.
I can't seem to get through to her that I am okay. She's for it in her head I've been to hospital and I'm going to die. And her family is really old (in her eyes) and old people die...
I think you need to talk more about hospitals being a place where most people get better, especially people who are sick but not very very very sick. Hospitals have very special doctors and nurses who look after people and help them get better. Most people do get better, but sometimes people are very very very sick like friend's daddy was and sometimes they get better but sometimes they don't, like friend's daddy didn't. When mummy went to hospital, I was sick but not very very very sick, so the doctors and nurses helped me get better.
MD has explained it how we have explained it to DD.
We have explained that there are normal doctors you go to when you are a little bit sick and special doctors when the normal doctors can't help (all three of us have had surgery in the past 18 months do we've had a lot of medical appts, and all three if us in emergency!!). We've also lost a couple of family members in that time - both of them passed in hospital from drawn out illness, so we were able to explain about people being very very sixth and the doctors not being se to fix them. They can fix lots, but not everything.
We also used analogies she could understand by using toys. Some are broken that we can fix, and some are totally wrecked and can't be fixed.
It's hard for them to get a grasp if the differences when they are little, so simplifying as much as you can is helpful.
Explaining death
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