8 Children and Death in the Canadian Context

Abstract

Children in Canada face unique challenges and opportunities when faced with their own imminent death or the death of someone they love. Historically, we have used developmental stages to make sense of how children comprehend death and move through grief while paying less attention to the lifeworld of the child and their own agency and the ability to make meaning of these crises. Children are socialized to dying and death and come to their full understanding of these difficult concepts and life events through social, cultural, psychological, environmental and other ways in which they interact with their world. Age and developmental stage while instructive do not tell the whole story.