Births, marriages and deaths – more children’s chatter

N’s had a lot of births, deaths and marriages on his mind recently.

Births

The baby thing has likely been prompted by his friend’s mum being pregnant.  He seems more interested in the pregnant mum and the baby in the tummy situation, than any babies that he’s come across.  But while we were camping, he came out with the announcement to me

‘There’s a baby in your tummy, mummy’.

Er no, I had to be quick to inform him that it was actually just me being overweight and having a fat tummy, rather than a baby.  I really didn’t want him spouting that untruth out to the people we were camping with.  He did then justify his comment and say it was only pretend, but I had to explain it probably wasn’t a good idea to pretend that.

He’s also been waffling on about men and boys not having babies in their tummies.  I’m glad he’s got that anatomically correct.

Marriages

We’ve been discussing surnames.  N’s pretty good at knowing all the people in the family who have the same surname as us.  But he wasn’t sure when I explained that one of his aunts used to have our surname, but now is called something else because she got married.  He didn’t get that at all, even when I explained that I changed my name and didn’t always have the same name.

We do have a lot of chats about what we did in life ‘Before N’.  Timelines aren’t N’s strong point.  Even when I say about our wedding, that only his oldest 3 cousins were born, he asks who looked after him when we were getting married.  To him, he was in existence, even before we were married.  God knows how given we’ve been married 11 years!  He doesn’t grasp that before he was born, that means that he didn’t exist and therefore wasn’t around.

As for understanding that his daddy and me didn’t know each other when we were children, or until we were much older…that’s way beyond him.

Deaths

N does talk about death quite a lot compared to what I would expect.

Even coming up for 2 years after my mum, his Grandma died, he asks a lot of questions.  Early on, most were about what she was wearing when she died.  Not sure why he was asking that.  Then since selling her house, the questions are more about ‘where’s her house?’ and even asking whether she was dead at home.  She wasn’t and he knew she was in the hospice.

I’ve also been asked whether my brother still needs to go round and cut the grass at her house.  I had to explain again that Grandma died so doesn’t live there anymore, but someone else bought the house and now lives there.  So they will cut their own grass now.

We did have a recent conversation about dying as well.  N was saying that old people die, and poorly people die.  I explained that generally it was old people who died, and people are  very poorly, so badly that doctors can’t make them better. Of course then he asked if we would die.

‘Yes, everyone dies in the end, but we all live our lives first, and we intend to live a long time so we can look after you’.  Thankfully he didn’t seem to worry any more, although he has asked more questions about when people die.  It’s a bit of a gruesome conversation really, but I guess it’s better to talk about these things and ensure there are truthful answers to his questions.

Are your kids interested in births, marriages and deaths? How do you answer them?