Ep #12: Having Tough Conversations with Your Kids with Elena Lister and Michael Schwartzman

What is the best way to talk to children about loss or grief or death? This could be the death of a family member or the death of a pet, a teacher or loss, like a divorce or moving and loss of friends.

Today, I’m having a conversation with Elena Lister and Michael Schwartzman about their new book, Giving Hope where they basically give you a handbook on how to handle these kinds of difficult conversations. They talk about four things that children need to know about death and best practices for telling children about death or serious illnesses or different kinds of loss.

These tips are incredibly practical and so helpful and they apply to things that all of us are going to have children go through over the course of their lives. So you’re definitely going to want to listen in on this one. Elena is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry. She’s a consultant in many schools, companies and organizations across the country.

Michael is a senior psychologist and board-certified psychoanalyst and he’s worked with children, adolescents, adults and families for more than 40 years. In addition to his private practice, he is a school psychologist at St. David’s School in New York City. And he lectures regularly to parents and professional colleagues on child development, parenting and school-related issues. He’s also the author of The Anxious Parent: Freeing Yourself from Fears and Stresses of Parenting. Listen in to this conversation and you’re going to want to grab a copy of this book. I’ll be right back with Elena and Michael right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: I am here with Elena and Michael. Welcome to the show.

Elena: So good to be here. Thank you for the opportunity, Amy.

Michael: Really nice to be with all of you. Thank you.

Amy: I am so excited to talk to you about your new book, Giving Hope. And I was curious about this title because the book is about talking to children about grief and loss. And how did you come up with this title of Giving Hope?

Elena: Well, it started because our whole premise is that it helps children to talk about this. So we have a very positive attitude about the benefits of talking with children directly and honestly about illness, death and loss. And we feel the children who are dealt with about these kinds of hard stuff directly will end up feeling more resilient. Meaning, that they learn to handle hard stuff and they can think to themselves, I handled a hard thing, I can do hard things. And when you feel like you can do hard stuff deep inside of yourself I think a child looks forward to the future with less trepidation and more hope.

So the idea is that it’s by learning to be with these difficult things that we get to be hopeful in life.

Michael: The only thing I would add would be, parents, often we have found, come into these conversations with children wanting to say what needs to be said and keep what doesn’t need to be said. This whole idea of protection. And one of the things that we come away with having written this book is that the best kind of protection you have is that your child should be able to feel resilient in a time where there is a lot of need.

And while there’s the short-term gain in protection of keeping everybody shielded from something difficult, we take the position that using that difficulty will lead the child, the parent, the parent-child to a stronger sense that they can keep up with this too. And we think that that inspires a hopeful feeling.

Amy: I love that. It brings such a positive light I think to this difficult topic.

Michael: Yeah, we think that way.

Elena: We’re well aware that a lot of parents, teachers, any adult taking care of a child might approach this with anxiety and fear and think to themselves, why do I need to talk to them about such painful stuff? They’re young. They’ve got plenty of time in life to learn the hard things. Maybe it’ll make them have nightmares. Maybe they’ll worry about me dying also and they’ll start to be afraid of everything. And our findings first of all in clinical experience is that that’s not the case. And in the book, we talk about some examples of how that unfolded.

In particular, there’s a kindergarten class that I worked with at a school where it was not talked about directly that a teacher was dying of cancer. And the kids were showing symptoms and asking lots of questions and questions were answered with a sort of vagueness. “Oh, she’s not feeling well today.” But they kept saying, “Why has her hair gone? How come she’s been out for so long? Where is Mrs. so and so?” And they were symptomatic at home. They were anxious. They were clingy. Some of them were wetting their beds.

And then I had an experience with a different school where it was talked about very directly with the same-age children. A teacher was dying and he filmed a message to the class and the class every week wrote him cards. And they made a song for him and so on. And those kids were not symptomatic. They knew he was dying and they had a chance to say goodbye. And after he died they felt not guilty or badly. They had had a chance to kind of be with him. And he was also there to be able to say, “This teacher’s going to take over for me and she’s going to be great”, and so on.

So that was one concrete experience and we have lots of others in the book that we write about where in fact, the opposite is true. When you face things directly and honestly that you don’t have to be afraid that your child will be up at night with nightmares. And maybe they’ll be aware that yes, death happens to other people but you can talk about that too. And when you talk about that too they get support and journey in facing the stuff in life that is there even though we wish it weren’t.

Amy: I love that. And I noticed that message in your book a lot. And that it also builds a sense of trust and security around when they do have those questions it’s safe to ask about it instead of we can’t talk about that, we have to hide that.

Michael: In that sense, we think of this as building the ability to make conversations about difficult topics. The difficult topics that we go over very carefully are illness, death and loss but we think at root, the building blocks to all of this is being able to make the conversations.

Amy: Absolutely. And I think if you start that early and show that it’s okay to talk about it then it opens that up. I love that message in this book. You talked about before you even start having a conversation about loss or grief with a child there’s something you do first. And tell me a little bit about that because I thought this was an interesting thing to think about.

Michael: We think about this a lot. There’s no such thing as time travel but if you think about it when a parent is raising a child and they make reference to a period in a child’s life and they’re struggling for how to handle something they go back to their own experience. And in that sense, you’re only as good for your child as you’ve mastered something for yourself. So this is a great opportunity for parents to project the experience that they carry that they have into the space where they’re trying to relate to how their child is feeling.

So the first step that we talk about is getting a hold of yourself, dealing with your own reactions, your own feelings so that you can sort that out from the feelings you’re having with your child, from your child. That you’re then really, really, really wanting to be able to focus on. So the number one thing that we talk about in great detail is taking care of yourself. I think that’s what you’re referring to. Elena probably has something she can add.

Elena: Well, one of the things we thought might be helpful because we want this book to be a companion to you, parent, teacher, caretaker of children as you face difficult moments with them. So we thought if we kind of identified best practices they could be guideposts. And there’s a whole lot within each one but there are sort of taglines that you can think about that might orient you. And that first one that Michael beautifully just described is know yourself. And then we have a bunch of others that we can get into any time you want.

So that is a best practice and you’re right, Amy, it’s the very first thing you do before you go into any conversation with a child. So that when you’re in the conversation with them you’re in a really grounded place. You know how this is affecting you so you can focus in on your child and really listen to them rather than be busy with your own feelings about whatever happened. Let’s say someone in the family died, you’ve sorted that out for yourself and now you can just follow your child and be there for them.

Amy: Okay. I think this is so important and good to kind of get a wrap around that first. So good. And you talk in the book about a variety of different kinds of loss and grief. So I mean I think primarily there was a lot of focus on death and serious illness. But this could be death of a pet, it could be divorce. I mean there are many different kinds of loss and grief. And do these same principles apply of talking to your children honestly and openly about those things and kind of opening that space for a conversation around it, apply to everything?

Elena: Yeah. I mean I can’t think. I don’t know, Michael, maybe you can, I can’t think of anything that we would feel doesn’t benefit from this kind of approach in terms of difficult things to talk about with your child or a child, so the death of a pet, absolutely. And we have some stories in the book where a parent could have lied about what happened to the pet. They went to a farm in the country rather than be in the city. And then later on, of course, the child finds out that that is not what happened to Fluffy or whatever.

And they’re mad, they feel betrayed and confused. So death of a pet for sure, divorce, yeah. In our practices, we work with parents and children who have been going through those kinds of things and in general when a child’s been talked to directly about a divorce that’s about to happen, a divorce after it’s happened, what’s been going on. That child responds better to the event. So our idea is, we can’t necessarily change that some hardships happen in people’s lives, in everybody’s life at some point and therefore maybe in your child’s life.

But what we can do is change how your child experiences that and grows with it. And so that all these painful experiences that we have in life can also be growth experiences. Death of a pet, moving, sometimes you have to move to a completely different place and you lose all your friends because they’re back in the original place. Graduating, graduating elementary school and going on to middle school. I mean these are all, life transitions involve loss and gain and those are moments to recognize any time of separation, yeah, absolutely.

Amy: And I felt this book is, it just, it feels like it’s written kind of as a handbook to just have on your shelf for any of these moments which I thought was so helpful and I would just encourage you to go grab a copy of this book and just set it on your shelf because this is exactly what it is. It just walks you through what to say, how to maybe start that conversation, how to keep it open. I found that so helpful. So as we’re kind of getting to some of the content in the book, you talked about four things specifically that children need to know about death and I found this kind of interesting.

What are four things and this, whether it’s a person or a pet or whatever, what are those four things that it’s really important for children to know about that? Because I think, yeah, we’re trying to shield them, we’re trying to protect them from these really painful things but you say these are things they need to know, what are those four things?

Elena: Right, okay, so I’m going to explain the four things and then I’m going to offer you some about how we incorporate that into the conversation. So one is universality, and universality means that all living things must die. So that’s one part of what death means. We’re really talking about the potential which we believe in to have a conversation with a child before someone dies and about just death itself because they’re surrounded by death anyway. They see leaves fall. They see a dead fly on the windowsill.

They hear about a death in another family. They see it in, animated films are rife with death. So you’re not introducing your child to a new concept. What you’re doing is providing a space to talk about it. So universality, all living things must die. Irreversibility, death is permanent. People don’t come back to life after they die and nor does anything else. Finality, dead things can’t do what living things do so dead things don’t breathe. Dead things don’t eat. And then the last one is causality which is death occurs for many different reasons.

So those are all things if you think about it kind of describe death as a concept. And we’re imagining that in these conversations you’re not really teaching your child these things. You’re not saying, “Okay, so there are four things about death.” What you’re doing is just listening for how they understand and what they note about it. And sort of registering in your mind, okay, so they get this permanent part but they don’t yet really grasp and they’re not ready perhaps to grasp that all things die. It just sort of helps you understand why your child is.

And we don’t believe in sort of pushing that on a child but offering more and if your child asks any question, if your child said to you, “Well, does everything have to die?” We believe you’d say yes and that’s the concept of universality. So it’s really your own conceptualization that that’s about.

Michael: And then also just to make it easier we see this is one ongoing conversation, not a one-time conversation. And that you especially learn what more your child needs to know from the kinds of questions that they ask you. So we clearly take that position, let your child take the lead. But especially because as Elena described, their understanding of each element that contributes to an understanding of death evolves, over time.

So as they develop cognitively their ability to understand all of this develops until you’re having a conversation that’s pitched to the ongoing level that they continue to establish with more understanding. And so it just continues that way.

Amy: Yes. I love that. And so you’re kind of setting up for yourself, you’re knowing the four parts of it so that as they ask questions you can kind of help them work their way through that, getting that full understanding. So let me ask you this, as a mom of a young child. I have five children but my youngest is eight. Recently she has started having concerns at night about sleeping alone in her room and she’s worried about something happening to me. She’ll ask me things like, you know, she’s worried about me dying, “Are you going to die?”

And maybe this is partly because we’ve lost three grandparents actually within a very short time period and so I think there is concern there. So how would you respond to that, an eight-year-old asking, “Mom, are you going to die”, or being concerned about me dying?

Michael: The fact that she’s asking is the best part because that means that there’s an openness, there’s an airiness, there’s a capacity for having that kind of conversation. And that you’re not going to get too upset to be able to handle it. So that’s obviously, a great advantage. And then the point is she’s probably realizing because she’s able to think more and more, she’s making all of these connections. And the thought comes to her.

So you’re best off we would say, addressing it directly and talking about, “I understand given what happened to grandma”, however, you say it. “You get worried about mommy but mommy takes very, very good care of herself. Mommy is much younger and is really very actively involved and able to see but I understand and I appreciate and that’s why this is good that we can have this kind of a conversation.”

Amy: Is there any value, so here’s where we find out if I did good parenting or not.

Elena: You did, Amy, it’s a given, you did.

Amy: Okay. Is there any value in just accepting the truth of it? So I try to be very honest with my children but in a non-threatening way. So I say, “I definitely am going to die someday because we all do but I’m probably not going to do it any time soon.” And then talking about some of those things you mentioned around talking kind of about the safety right now. They’re young, I’m in good health, all of these things and here are some things I do to take care of my body. But also making it maybe not as fearful because of course I will someday but it’s just not something we need to worry about right now, is that helpful or no?

Elena: That is terrific. That is really terrific. And I can imagine your child feeling calmed by that because you’re not getting all anxious and upset about it overly. And you’re able to, even though you had deaths that were important to you, you were able to say, “Yes, death happens.” And if a child is very young we might even say something like, “I plan to live a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time.” And because you’re just sort of making it a little lighter by saying many very’s. For an eight-year-old like your child, that would probably seem a little silly or something. But yes, absolutely, I am going to die.

And another thing we think of adding in is, “And it won’t happen for a long time. And when it happens you’ll be ready and you won’t be alone.”

Amy: I love that addition. You’ll be ready and you won’t be alone. That is so beautiful. That’s so good. I’m so glad we’re having this conversation. This is amazing. So one of the other things I picked up in the book and really liked was you talked about best practices for telling a child about death or serious illness or divorce, any of these major losses. And I found these tips really, really helpful and something I think parents will find really helpful and your stories are so good. But talk to me just a little bit about some of those best practices that you recommend.

Michael: The idea is when you’ve done this over and over and you’ve developed the experience there are these things that you come back to that’s kind of like hallmarks of what it is that works. So one of the main ones would be. Be honest with your child, tell them the truth, pretty much the whole truth, not necessarily all the truth and certainly not all at once. So the idea is they’re developing and learning how to trust who you are and what you are and that they can rely on you. And if their senses tell them more than their experience permits them to really know about, they want to confront it.

So the idea is you help them to do it in a way that targets how they understand things. And within that, you dose the amount of fear and then you judge it by how they respond. I mean Elena will have more to say but that’s what we could call a best practice.

Elena: Absolutely, yeah, Michael, well said. I think let’s say, if there’s an unfortunate circumstance and someone that you and your child know is dying, and that’s known. But they haven’t died yet so should you be honest and tell your child about that? And we believe yes when it’s absolutely clear that the person is going to die and it’s going to be relatively soon. So we’re not saying say it a year in advance and ideally not the day before. But if it looks like a few weeks, maybe a few months, that’s worth doing and so you would be honest.

And the reason for that is because your child is going to pick up on the fact that you are different. Something has changed in the atmosphere and people are upset and they may hear people talking or whispering about it. And suddenly we have a story, an uncle. He can’t come to dinner. He used to come every Sunday, well, he’s not coming anymore. And there’s really no way to say, “He’ll be back next month.” So if you’ve told your child that somebody that they know is ill then you say, “They’re getting sicker.” And then you come to a point. So that’s a truth. It’s not all the details.

It’s not, we think they’re going to die yet because that may not be known and they may still be undergoing very active treatment and there’s hope that they might recover. And then when it becomes clear, if it becomes clear that they’re going to die, you then have the opportunity, “That sickness that we’ve been talking about that Aunt Jane has, well, the doctors don’t have a medicine that can fix it and Aunt Jane is going to die because her body can’t live with that illness, that sickness.” And then that child has the opportunity to do what we were talking about the kindergarteners at the school.

They can have a visit with Aunt Jane. They can tell Aunt Jane they love her if they feel like last time they said, “I don’t want to go to Aunt Jane’s house, she smells.” And they think Aunt Jane heard it, they can do something nice and say they have a chance to come to a good place in that relationship. And Aunt Jane has a chance to say to your child, “I love you so much and I know you’re going to grow up to be amazing.” And things like that. So there is a beauty in the intimacy that can happen with that kind of truth.

Another best practice is, know your child. So know yourself, know your child which means that before you have this kind of conversation you’re thinking to yourself, some questions we pose, a whole bunch of questions. How does my child usually respond to difficult news? Does my child like to be held and be near or do they want to be playing with a toy and no touch? And is my child somebody who expresses his emotions or keeps them in? What helps my child when they’re facing a hard time? What has backfired with my child when they face a hard time?

So then you’ve got these whole things, you’ve got a sense, what my child usually does is they sit very quietly, they stare at me, they don’t say much at all and then they burst into tears. So let’s say, okay, that’s who my child usually is. And you’re going to have the conversation with this in mind. And then what your child does is get up and stomp around and throw a book which is completely not what you expected. So another best practice is, expect the unexpected which basically, means you’ve got an idea of what might happen but you are always following your child’s cue.

So if your child doesn’t do what you expect you’re kind of prepared, you’ve got an idea what might but you’re kind of prepared because you know that sometimes we don’t do the things we usually do and you’re ready to go with that. But the idea of having some notion before you go in helps ground you so that you feel like, okay, I’ve got my bearings.

Michael: Yeah, I mean the only thing I would add to what Elena described is that people often ask for the answer. They love to have the answer. They love to have the silver bullet. They love to make it just all okay. And the point is there is no single answer. But if you continue to try to taper the conversation to where your child is at, what seems more and more relevant for them, you sort of give them the basis for getting that kind of answer. And it promotes what we think is the most important which is this sense of togetherness. And the idea that nobody should ever be alone with any of those kinds of thoughts.

Amy: Yeah, so good. There was one more just little section I thought I wanted to bring up and this book is just so full of good tips so make sure you get it. But one of the things that you talked about when you’re getting ready to actually, you’ve done the work, you’ve thought about yourself and where you’re at. You’ve thought about your child and what maybe you’re predicting might happen and trying to be ready and open. But you talked about maybe not doing it alone. So doing it as if you are in a marriage, maybe doing it together as parents or if you are not in a marriage having someone there with you to do that.

You talked about not doing it in their room which I thought was interesting, the telling the truth, nothing but the truth but maybe not all of it at once.

Michael: Yeah, I mean the idea is that we want to try to taper it to what a child can handle. And the idea is you’re trying to get them at a moment where you’re free from distraction. You’ve calmed everybody by just trying to pull everybody together. And you’re both trying to communicate in words what’s happening but you want to communicate in a manner how it can bring you together and how it can make you feel just with the other. There’s something very liberating about being able to just let things be experienced.

So we try to help people think through the idea that having a safe common space where you can gather and then leave doesn’t happen before a child goes to sleep and it’s just part of the way you get into that hard part with a sense of togetherness. And yes, you tell the truth, not necessarily all of the truth and not necessarily all at the same time but you always tell the truth.

Elena: Yeah. And I would add in about having another person there. That’s so that if you get overwrought, if you just, I mean you’re at a point where you can’t catch your breath because you’re so upset. Then the other person, the other adult can step in. And you might be able to say, “I’m just going to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” Or “Mommy, daddy, whatever, needs a minute. I need a minute to just kind of catch my breath”, and the other adult is there. So that the child never feels like the adults in the room with them, that there’s no adult in the room with them who’s for them, the child.

Because at the moment, you adult are just too caught up in your own thing and that happens. With the best of planning, it’s going to happen. So the other adult there is a sort of backup for you. And I think it helps the adult. I mean to know that there’s somebody else here who understands the situation, who I’ve talked this out with, I feel adult, I feel more supported in doing that. And the not in the bedroom is because as you’re alluding to, at nighttime right before bed is when we separate. If you think about when is your child scared, when does the most difficult question come up? It’s usually at bedtime.

And so if you tell difficult news in their bedroom you are providing a connection with that difficult stuff with the bedroom. But if you tell it in a common space where a lot of stuff happens their bedroom becomes an inner sanctum that has not had that conversation as the initial thing. So I mean at some point you’re going to have conversations in their bedroom. But introducing a new very, very hard truth we believe is better outside of the bedroom. And then there are others, as Michael was saying, not before bedtime, that all screens are off, no phones, nothing else.

Do it so that you can face each other because I cannot tell you how many teens I have in my practice who say, “My parents don’t talk to me until we’re in the car. And then they mention everything because we can’t look at each other.” And that works at times but for a young child, younger than a teen you want to be able to be present and you can see them and they can see you and they can reach you if they want physical contact but they don’t have to be sitting on your lap, so there’s space.

And we also recommend that you have in mind something to do after such a conversation like you wait, “Does anybody have any questions?” And we have siblings of all ages together because as Michael was saying, how do we get through these things together? So even if there is a three-year-old and a 10-year-old, you talk to the youngest child present and you can add more for the 10-year-old later. And so you’re all together, “Does anybody have any questions?”

It’s always good to ask that and then you pause even though we never like to have silence. We get all awkward and we think we have to fill it and we start talking about things we don’t really need to say but just sit with it and let your child have a minute or two to think if they have any questions. And you can say, “Now is not your only chance to ask questions, you can ask them to me any time of the day or night.”

But then, “Okay, no more questions, why don’t we go order pizza for lunch.” Or, “Why don’t we get out that puzzle we were going to do.” Or, “Why don’t we turn on some movie we were going to watch.” So that there is a natural gradual transition to continuing life.

Amy: I love that but then you would do it together so you’re together and then you’re going to move on to the next thing. Just one follow-up question on that because we mentioned teens and children of all ages. If a child wants to leave, do you let them leave and go be in their room alone and then keep the rest together? Do you give them the freedom to do that if that’s what they need?

Michael: We would always say that if a child needs to go off and be with themselves that it’s always a good idea to let them do that. I mean everybody will signal to everybody what the tolerance level is and what the wish level is and all of that. I mean, yes absolutely.

Amy: So you follow your child’s cue on that and pay attention and have a plan like we said, but if it doesn’t go as predicted then you give them some freedom?

Michael: Well, that’s so important because different things will come out from everybody. So it’s best to go, as they say, go with the flow of how it goes.

Elena: I think also if the child does need to go off and be on their own, you have in mind you’re going to check in on them pretty soon after. And that there is a way to say, “Buddy, you need to have some time by yourself, sure.” And kind of make it that there is a thing that’s happening, that one of the ways that you want to be with this is to be by yourself for a while and that’s okay. And we’re all here and when you’re ready to come back we’re here and we’ll keep your pizza warm, and if not I’ll come on in and just see how you’re doing in a little while.

So that there’s still a part of things kind of in a way even though they have, I totally agree with Michael they have the space to go off and be by themselves.

Amy: You guys, this conversation has been amazing, thank you so much for coming and sharing these helpful tips and ideas and playbook for us. And definitely, go and check out this book, it is something that you could use over and over again for different things that happen throughout your child’s life. And so you’re going to want it on your shelf. And thank you so much for coming and having this conversation with us today.

Michael: Thank you for having us. It’s been wonderful to be with you, thank you.

Elena: It’s been a delight really, Amy, thank you.

Amy: Thanks. And I will see you guys all again next week for an episode.

Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and listening to this episode of the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast. We are a brand new podcast which means we are harder to find than the perfect LEGO in a big box full of LEGO. And we need your help so that we can reach more moms, and parents, and teachers with this information about their children’s brains. So how can you help? You can follow this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. That would mean the absolute world to us.

And hey, we want to make it fun because at Planning Playtime we are all about fun. We made a very special gift for you and your kiddo. And your follows, ratings and reviews are going to unlock different parts of that gift over the next few weeks. It’s going to be so much fun so after you follow, rate and review the podcast, head over to planningplaytime.com\podcastlaunch to find out where we are and how much of that gift you can go and get for your child right now. Thanks a million and I will see you on the next episode of the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast.