The Understanding Of Death

Death is the natural thing that happens to all living things. Everybody reacts to the loss of someone they love or care about. However, at different ages people react differently when somebody dies. For a child to understand death, the concept of death has to be formed in a child’s mind. The concept of death means that death is universal, inevitable, irreversible, and that there is no physical existence after death. The whole concept of death is being developed in a human being through the time and consequently the complete understanding of this concept depends on personal development.

One of the greatest Swiss developmental psychologists Jean Piaget after the decades of studies concluded that all children have uneven but gradual development of their sophistication and that every stage has to have its own time. The first goes first and only then the second stage can develop. Piaget divided all of the development into four main stages: 1) sensorimotor, 2) preoperational, 3) concrete operational and 4) formal operational.

When a baby is born he or she enters the sensomonitor stage of development. During this stage a baby discovers the world through grasping, smelling, sucking, and other primitive actions. These actions however have no significant results for overall development of a baby’s worldview. At the age of one month babies learn to realize the shape of objects. Being five month old babies can acquire information with their hands. At this point of time things only exist when babies see them. As soon as the object disappears it is out of an infant’s mind. The most important thing that impacts the understanding of death and dying, when a baby is in sensorimotor stage, is the concept of object permanence. This concept means that objects continue to exist after they disappear from the sight. Piaget first noticed this phenomenon in 1952 when he took away some object from babies younger than eight months there was no reaction by the babies which greatly supports the theory that babies at this age do not have the concept of object permanence developed. Thus, babies can only start realizing loss of someone when they have the concept of object permanence developed. During the second year of life children begin to realize that people that surround them and disappear sometimes do not stop existing. The second year is also a very important period in developing symbols and associating them with some objects.

The next stage in the development is the preoperational stage. According to Piaget we are in this stage in the age from two to six. During this period we learn to reason things intuitively without full understanding how things work, according to some magical things. At this age kids develop their symbolism, they view made up monsters as death. During this phase of development kids are usually self-centered which means that there are only them and the world is turning around them. Another feature of this stage is the concept of conservation which means that properties of the object do not change as the forms of the object change. “Piaget believed that both object constancy and conservation mark the beginning of a major advance in cognitive development, one that lasts until the age of 11 or 12.” Preschoolers view death as separation from them. Most children of this age feel grief when they lose somebody but they do not understand the whole concept of death yet. They picture death not as a permanent thing. When playing cops and robbers kids shoot each other with toy guns and the shot one falls imitating death and quickly gets up. By doings this they show their view of death as temporary and partial.

The third stage of cognitive development is concrete operational stage. This stage starts when we are about seven years old. It is when we begin to reason logically. During this stage the magical thinking still exists and the death is viewed as some scary skeleton that is going to kidnap and kill them. Between ages six and ten children think that they can cheat death which shows that they do not understand the universality of death yet. The mature understanding of death starts when children are about ten years old. The fact that the suicide among children of ages from 5 to 14 is present highlights that children do not fully understand the concept of death. Children simply do not see the number of possibilities in the future that is also the reason why the suicide among children happens.

The next and the final stage of Piaget’s cognitive development is formal operational stage. At this stage children obtain a possibility of logical and abstract thinking. By the age of ten we start to understand that death will take part sometime in our bodies, and by understanding this we agree that we will also die some day. The main idea of Piaget’s theory and all his studies is that adults are able to understand death whereas children can not.

According to the psychodynamic point of view, the point when a child starts to realize that he or she will die or another one will die is another facet of the sense of self. Another great scholar Sigmund Freud spent a great deal of time on studying the development of children. He also found out that as a child gets more sophisticated he or she differentiates others from his or herself.

"According to Margaret Mahler’s theory the newborn’s subjective world is initially self-absorbed." Only by the age of two and a half to three a child achieves a sense of his or her separation from others. The organization of an emotional dimension to the sense of self is called libidinal object constancy. Mahler calls this stage as the psychological birth of an infant. From this point of view infants do not have a formed understanding of death but they emotionally react to the caregiver disappearance.

According to Easson a very young child is a part of the parent –child relationship and that is why the child responds to the feelings of his or her parents. At this age fatally ill children do not realize that they will die soon, therefore they do no get too much upset. They only get upset when they see their caregivers being sad over them. Parents should talk to little kids about death but it is very understandable that no parent wants to do it. Most mothers find it very challenging to talk about particular death of a particular child as probably they can relate such a situation with their own families. It’s a big problem for them and they choose to leave this subject without discussion although I believe that children need to know more about death so that to be better prepared and understanding for their future.

People undergo different stages of development throughout their life, not only in childhood as Freud’s theory states. According to other psychological theorist Erik Erikson believes in life-span developmental psychology which states that people differentiate and become overall different with the new crises and challenges in life. Erikson says that with each new decision people make they become more developed and each subsequent decision in their life would be based in part on that former decision with a previous experience in mind. On the other hand is the previous decision was a wrong one, the decision as to the new task can be held back as people could be afraid of possible outcomes of such decision. They look back and see an unpleasant experience and this makes them think of a bad result in whatever they do. This situation can be observed in everyday life of almost each person.

The scientific proof of those situations can be found in the Erikson’s four stages of infancy and childhood, involving conflicts and challenges. The first stage a child undergoes when he or she interacts in the first years of life with the parents and external environment. In case when "psychological, security, and belongingness needs are generally met", children become more trusting. Their inner sense of security grows stronger and they acquire a belief for a good future because as they have learned they can predict their environment to some extent. Totally opposite effect the mistrusting feelings have on children. They become anxious and defensive, they have no belief in their future security. I think this first stage of a child’s life is of great importance and it forms his or her comprehension of life as a whole for years to come. The second stage in a child’s development although rather physical has a huge psychological impact on his or her life. In this stage child learns to walk and to hold things, this allows him or her to develop a sense of "doing something independently ", if those attempts fail, child may and probably will feel ashamed and somehow mistreated. I believe in this stage parents should encourage children to try doing things on their own and if something is a challenge help them without being pushy and aggressive. In that way children will feel welcome and cared for rather then rejected by their own parents, in return they will acquire more confidence in what they do in their future life.

Third stage that takes place between the ages of 3 and 6 is the logical continuation of the second stage. When kids get very active they want their parents not to get too involved in their activities. Parents’ role at this time is rather of a spectator, of course to a certain degree. Children have to feel the sense of being taking an initiative themselves and being able to take and resolve new challenges. This again would give them a feeling of ability and self worth, if this doesn’t happened a child will develop a sense of guilt and resentment from the society. Examples of such children are numerous unfortunately and they would have been avoided if parents new about this problem in time. The fourth and the last stage in child’s development according to Erikson lays during the years 6 and 7. This final state means that children have to learn to act like a full grown ups and adjust to the rules and norms of the world of grown ups. I think that at first especially, children may feel lost and very challenged by a quickly changing and difficult world of adults. And of course if children are not on the same page with the rest of their external environment they become stressed and helpless. This causes them to be closed and feel inferior to their peers, which in later years results in poor performance of most tasks they do. Consequently, this fourth stage is so to speak the last chance of a child to be fully accepted by the outside world and to become adjusted to its rules and functioning schemes. On the other side this is the stage when one finally decided if the world is a nice place to be in or a dangerous place and one has to protect himself or herself from any influences from outside.

The feeling of rejection a child may acquire throughout those four stages of development, will most probably result in sense of inferiority as I have already mentioned. It could grow into a very extreme feeling of self hatred and unworthiness, which in turn may lead to suicidal thoughts and even suicide itself. I think that this situation can be prevented by careful observation of such children and by encouraging them to perform whatever they wish by themselves and helping them when really needed. Constant care and advice could do a lot for these children and their psychological problems should never be neglected.

The approach to children’s development on the basis of step-by –step theories are contradicted by a different version called "the humanistic existential perspective". It claims that children regardless of how many stages they have gone through of years 3 and older have a sense of grief and loss that is formed altogether from what their experiences were, their environment, family bonds, cultural experiences. And some children can comprehend death much earlier than indicated by the Erikson’s theory for instance. Humanistic approach also says that each situation is very individual and everything must be taken into consideration, although children do have a strong emotional reaction to the loss of people they have known.

About the Author: Jeff Stats is a writer at essay writing service http://Mindrelief.net. Order quality custom essays from our essay service.