What would you say to a child who wants to know why people murder each other? My neice asked me about how she saw on the news a mom that killed her husband and child and I don't know of a "kid friendly" way to approach this?
by 
Ashleyred
ANSWERS: 8
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This is a difficult subject because it is very important that you don't justify the act of murder. By giving your child "reasons" you are almost teaching him/her that its OK to kill someone if a set of circumstances have been met. What you say needs to be different depending on the kind of killing you want to teach him about. I am looking for ideas at the moment... These links are worth reading: # http://www.hospicenet.org/html/talking.html # http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/109578
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I would simply say that some people get sick at some point in thier lives and thier sickness can make them hurt other people, sometimes thier sickness makes them very mad and sometimes it makes them very sad, other times it makes them not know right from wrong. I would stress that when people get sick, they should see a doctor.
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In general I would try to tell her the truth, at a level appropriate to her ability to understand. That depends on the child's age and personality somewhat, but I don't think it's a good idea to "sugar coat" this sort of thing or try to make it child friendly. So for a very young child, it might sound something like this: "some people are very angry. They don't have any real friends, or they have decided that everyone is against them, or something bad happened to them and they don't know how to get over it. So because they're so hurt or angry or dead inside, they think that if they kill someone else it will make them feel better or solve something." With a child (as with adults!), I'm always looking for opportunities to play the "interconnectedness" note -- a chance to slip in some little subliminal message about how we're all woven together. If someone has lost track of this interconnection so severely that murder becomes an option, that's a great place to insert such messages.
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My son has asked me this, and I let him know that some people have sick brains. I let him know it's not something you can catch, but that when their brain gets sick they can't think right and can do horrible things.
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tell her that person was evil
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just tell her some people are just plain evil
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tell her theyre evil
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tell her those people are evil to do that
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