Friday’s Discussion Topic:

Should a preschool discuss death with children, when parents were NOT notified of the discussion?

This situation happened last month in my child’s preschool classroom.  To put it lightly, I was NOT impressed!  Now I am not a confrontational person.  I try to stay positive and look for the good in people.  But this situation, ruffled my feathers!

Here is what happened…Over winter break, one of the children in my daughter’s class lost a parent.  It was an unexpected and tragic loss for the family.  A couple parents heard about the news over break, but the majority of parents had no clue.

When we picked up our children from class on the first day back after break, we were notified of the family’s loss in a letter.  In this same letter, we were told that the teachers had discussed dying and loss with the children.  YES, you read that correctly.  The teachers had ALREADY discussed this in class!

I felt that this was very unprofessional and disrespectful to parents.  I believe that a letter should have been sent home stating what happened and that there would be discussion about it in the NEXT class.  This way parents would have the opportunity to discuss it at home with their child.  They could have also opted out of the the next class if they felt that their child was not emotionally ready to discuss this topic.

One little girl in class now wakes up at night yelling for her mom.  She also asks, “Mommy are you going die?”  This could have been prevented if her parents had the option to talk with her ahead of time.

Do you feel that this was appropriate to discuss in a preschool class?

Do you think that parents should have been notified in advance?