Childrens involvement in adult illness and death

My own experience of hospitals as a child was one of confusion, crushing guilt and boredom. Years later I came to understand this experience as one of my first and amongst the greatest exposure to abuse of power.

My father suddenly disappeared. I went to school one morning and when I came back he’d gone. He’d been taken into hospital after a heart attack. My mother and I went to the ward every day but because I was 9 I wasn’t allowed onto the ward and so just sat around outside bored out of my skull. I remember a nurse walking past once and I asked her, if I was very quiet, could see my father. She smiled and said, “Aren’t you grown up?” And then she left. Her spite was probably a result of being treated with contempt herself, but who cares? There are good reasons to curse, from time to time.

When my mother came out of the ward and told me to ask the taxi to wait I was glad to do something after what seemed like hours of boredom and it wasn’t until I was some way away that I asked “How’s dad?” “He’s dead.”

Things are very different now, thank Gods. Children are allowed onto wards, have specialist support when their loved ones become ill or die and are accepted at funerals. But still, many of us have doubts and fears about involving children in these high-drama, high-energy events. I propose that part of that anxiety is a way of maintaining some feelings of control over uncontrollable events. Children are the least powerful people around us and they’re used to the idea that adults can tell them what to do, know what is best for them, and that children are only good if they do as they’re told. If they object they are bad.

It’s as if we become amnesiac as soon as we become parents. Children are resilient, and have a better grasp of right and wrong than most adults. As adults we are responsible for keeping our children safe: seeing someone who is ill is not dangerous; seeing a dead body is not dangerous; being part of a funeral is not dangerous; seeing parents weeping and distraught will be shocking and difficult but not dangerous, particularly when we’re able to return to the child, love and talk with them, treating them as equals.