"How do you explain murder to a child?"

[Twinkling Butterfly]

...is the subtitle of an article I read today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20760883

What do you think?

I thought maybe there should be a trigger warning in the title, but the word "murder" was enough to warn you of the content, I'm sure.

[skyzonefree]

i was completely clueless when my son ask me this.. maybe the links below could be useful to others if and when the need arise..

PDF - How to explain death and murder to children

Talking To Children About Death

[HesDeltanCaptain]

In the case of Newtown and other such incidents I don't think I would explain it to a "child." How would a child even know it happened? If they come to me and ask me about it my answers would depend a lot on the kid's intelligence. Very young kids "A bad man came and did something horrible and sent the children to heaven." Should suffice. Older kids aware of good and evil and crimes require more in-depth explanations. But in that case, because we adults don't even fully understand it should include honesty. As a religious Jew I talk a lot with people about Big Question subjects and in all my studying and learning to date my best answer as to "Is there a G-d/afterlife?" is this: "I don't know - I've never died before." If trying to help kids process things like this, honesty is best. No 'Santa Claus,' 'they're in heaven now' cop-outs. Honesty is always best. Little kids are easier and couldn't handle or process the honest answers anyway.

When these things happen, it's easier for adults to regard the offender as evil, or an animal, but the fact is they're just as human as we are. Pets liked Hitler just fine, just because someone does evil things doesn't mean they're demons incarnate or anything. When people slaughter innocent children as in Newtown, if we wanna help ensure it doesn't happen again then we need to be honest about why it happened. Not cop-out and blame fantasy creatures. It happened because our culture is apathetic and brainwashed by 'violence is entertainment and patriotic.' So long as we allow violence to be entertaining, those with mental illness aren't going to be able to seperate reality from fiction and these things will happen over and over.

Gun control isn't the solution either because despite decades of anti-gun laws being passed, we're still ere looking at more legislation to fix things. But the underlying problem isn't guns, or gun availability but rather the culture that views gunplay as entertaining. Could outlaw all new gun sales overnight, but you'd still have 300 million guns in private possession. New gun laws following these occurences are feel-good measures only that beenfit politicians who can run on "hey look, I'm trying to do something about this." But it hasn't worked, nor will it until we change our cultural mindset.