Thoughts for the Week:

Talking about "then" and "now" can help children think about all the ways they've grown and what they were like when they were younger. The day-by-day growing that children experience often goes unnoticed, unless we take the chance to help children see all the inside and outside ways they've grown.

Conversations about things that happened a while ago can also open the way for talking about losses that children may have experienced, such as the death of a pet or someone they knew. Such conversations give us a chance to help children begin to understand one of the most difficult facts of life - that all living things die. It's a fact that remains hard for many of us to face, no matter how old we are. When a pet dies, the understanding of what death means will come only little by little - as will a child's readiness to accept a replacement. Children need a lot of help understanding death, and, like all of us, need time to grieve.