Are you struggling with how to talk to your preschooler about death after losing a close friend of family member?

Often, God reveals our truest purpose in our darkest hours.

When my mom lost her decade-long battle with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, I was pregnant with my youngest daughter. Seventeen months later, when I lost my stepmom Karen to colon cancer, both of my girls were still toddlers.

While I was beginning my marriage, career and family, my life revolved around aging and loss. I became a self-taught expert on things like skilled nursing, medical power of attorney and hospice. I fought like hell just to keep my head above water, grieving in slow motion and no longer able to relate to friends my own age.

Being a mom to my young daughters kept me going through an otherwise bleak and lonely time, but eventually, I knew I’d have to talk to my kids about death in terms they could understand.

How to talk to your preschooler about death

When my husband’s grandfather died a few months after we lost my stepmother, my sister-in-law, whose children are about the same ages as mine, asked how I had explained the death of a loved one to my oldest daughter.

We mostly talk about heaven

“Well, we mostly talk about heaven,” I told her.

Young children struggle to grasp the finality and truly understand death, but I believe that when we focus on our loved ones as an eternal piece of God’s creation, heaven becomes a very real and accessible place for them. In fact, little ones often have an easier time imagining heaven than we do.

While Karen was dying, we prayed every night for her to be free from pain and sickness. The first night after my stepmom passed away, my oldest daughter wanted to pray for her again.

“We don’t need to pray for Karen anymore,” I explained. “She’s in heaven. She’s not sick anymore.” I gave her a minute to process, then asked her what she thought Karen and Grandma Dixie were doing together in heaven.

(Our working definitions of heaven at this time were “the place where God lives” and “where Grandma Dixie is.”)

“Playing with bunnies and an elephant,” my then almost three-year-old said. My daughter’s name means “listener of God,” and I am constantly amazed by the brilliant intersection of her imagination and intuition.

Bunnies are an oddly appropriate symbol for my mother since I was born on Easter Sunday and had a Peter Rabbit nursery; the elephant was Karen’s favorite animal because of the years she spent in Africa. My toddler knew neither of these things.

Heaven is a real place

What she did know was that heaven is a real place were people are free from sickness and pain. She simply made it her own, in the same way she had processed my mom’s death on her own terms when she repeatedly called her a “pretty bird.”

Preschoolers need permission to grieve just as much as we do. And they may need considerably more time to process negative feelings. After all, they are still learning about and discovering their own emotions at this age.

Christian children’s books for kids about death

Inspired by our family’s journey through grief and loss, my beautifully illustrated children’s book, Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go?: A Preschooler’s Guide to Losing a Loved One*, uses biblical truth to reassure little ones that death can never really separate us from those we love.

Reinforcing the picture book’s comforting message of legacy and hope, the included Parents’ Guide features resources to help young children begin to understand death as a natural part of the circle of life and to identify the ways in which we can honor our loved ones going forward.

Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go? and Where Did My Sweet Grandpa Go? are now available in print and for Kindle on Amazon and in print on BarnesandNoble.com and BooksAMillion.com. My email subscribers can also download the books’ accompanying coloring pages, which pair illustrations from the book with Bible verses about the beauty of God’s creation.

I’ve put together a list of highly recommended children’s books about death, grief, and loss.

*Amazon affiliate link