如何与孩子谈论死亡

Adults avoid the subject of death; children ask about it anyway, and Qingming — the Chinese grave-sweeping festival — is when they ask. Dr Zhihao Yan describes three points at which death enters a children's philosophy classroom without being staged. A picture book about a leaf through four seasons lets seven-year-olds work out mortality from something they can see outside the window, with role-play and a walk under a real tree to anchor it. A lesson on superpowers turns into an argument about whether immortality is worth having, and a child answers that it is not: you would run out of things to try and be unable to stop. A third lesson, built around a dead toy dog, moves from abductive reasoning to whether it is ever right to eat one. His argument throughout: introduce this early rather than late, and never dismiss the feelings children attach to an animal.