Dealing with loss

We are sad to report that both our water frogs died early this last week. The reaction of the children was mixed as everyone deals with loss in a different way, and some of the children were more attached to the frogs than others. Most of the children wanted to look closely at the tank and observe what the frogs looked like. This generated discussion about the possible causes of the deaths. Since the frogs' stomachs appeared distended, some of the children thought that they had been fed too much. Others thought that they had eaten some of the gravel in the tank. Another idea was that they banged in to something in the tank and died as a result.

Ever since getting the frogs close to 2 years ago, one frog was a lot smaller than the other. A couple of the children thought that this was the baby frog, even though we explained that the frogs were the same age. They felt badly because the smaller frog died a little before the larger one, and they speculated that maybe the larger frog was eating the smaller frog's share of the food. One child felt responsible for the deaths since it was his job to feed the frogs the previous week.

We talked about what to do next with the frogs. Some of the children had lost pets before, so their answers ranged from: "burying them in a pet cemetery" to "flushing them down the toilet." Matthew Shusterman said that he had a pond in his back yard, and he could put them in the pond. "Maybe they would swim around again", he suggested hopefully. The children all voted, and the majority voted for Matt to take the frogs to his pond.

As it turned out, Matt took one of the frogs, and Teddy Friedman took the other. The children wondered about where the frogs would go now that they died. The idea of heaven was raised, and there were those who believed in heaven and those that didn't. The emotions in the classroom ranged from deep sadness to indifference, although since people show their feelings in such different ways, it's hard to know how some of the children were feeling who didn't on the surface show much of a reaction to the frogs' deaths. We expect to continue to explore their ideas of death and loss as the year goes on. This is a topic that is very much on the mind of children this age. We are also looking at some books which deal with this topic in an appropriate and helpful way. As soon as we find the best resources, we shall pass on this information. If any of you would like us to talk with your child further about his/her feelings, please let us know.

A special thanks to Chris Shusterman and Rebecca Friedman for putting the frogs in their ponds.