Watching little kids role play can be an amazing thing. I have found there is a distinct difference in the way boys and girls play. Even without trying to create gender lines my little ones have taken to playing kitchen with stuffed animals, superheroes, transformers, and dolls.
This past month has been interesting, and hard, to watch. A few weeks ago my 2 year old came running down the stairs with her baby in her arms. She was yelling, “My baby isn’t breathing! Help her! Help her!”. She dropped her baby in my lap and looked at me expectantly. I hugged her baby and told her she was just napping. My little lady took her baby upstairs only to come running again just a few minutes later. This time she told me, “She died mommy, she died. Save her! Save her!”. Then she “kissed” her baby (more like mouth to mouth) and left her baby on my lap because she died.
It has been extremely difficult for me. I have not a clue where this comes from. She knows her older sister passed away but we have never really talked about the “event”. It shocked me that her role play could affect me in such a way that it would cause me to have flashbacks. As she continued to play this game, I did my best to try to distract her with tea parties and walks and hugs and kisses. The distractions seemed to work. She seemed to quit role playing her baby dying.
Reprieve is sometimes a funny thing. This past week she found her daddy’s new shoe box. An innocent looking shoe box that started as a bed for her baby. Soon it became something different….a coffin. She brought her baby to me to dress her in her favorite dress. No big deal. Then she found her baby’s favorite blanket. Again, no big deal. Then she wrapped her baby up, gave her baby a kiss, told her bye-bye and I will miss you, and then put the lid on the box. Finally she put it under the pile of blankets and stood there and gave a little pouty lip. She went in search of flowers for baby doll but came back with her baby bottle to leave by the blanket pile. I have seen this and other similar situations happen five times this week.
My older boys smashed that box today. They couldn’t watch it anymore. It is just so odd. We all seem to lack the ability to even explain how she knows this. She has never even been to a funeral. We have never talked to her about the day Clara died. I can only surmise that she has seen enough through movies and tv to put a scenario together. Maybe she has overheard things from siblings or my husband and I. I will never know how she knows but I will remember it as the role play that can send those who have lived it into flashbacks, sadness, and a little anger. (Yeah anger at the box, I think. My 11 year old stomped it to bits!)
Oddly enough my little lady asked about her sister Clara today. She and my 4 year old son wanted to know why Clara had to be buried and if she is in Heaven. It is funny how their little minds and bodies play through real life situation. I can’t say it has been easy to watch but it reminds me that they are grieving in their own way and in their own time. I have to remember that their grief is different because they have never met Clara and that role play might be their best way to make their sister tangible. A real sister who is no longer here, who they will never meet on this earth, a sister who is waiting in Heaven.
