Word-for-word talks · ages 3 to 12
Either Your Child Has Already Asked You, Or They Are About To.
A dead bird on the pavement. A vet appointment on Saturday. A phone call about Nan before you are properly awake. However it arrives, the question is the same, and it does not wait for you to think.
What To Say When A Child Asks About Death, Written Out Word For Word
The first five sentences are on this page, free, and you can read them before the kettle boils. Everything under them is what comes after tonight: three packs of word-for-word talks for ages 3 to 12, written out in full, so that at ten past six in the morning you are reading, not inventing.
The free script · what to say tonight
Here Are The Five Sentences To Say Tonight. The Order Is The Point.
These five sentences are free right here. No sign-up, no email box for these. A parent who needs them tonight should have them tonight.
A child has to feel what a body does before they can understand a body stopping. So step one is not something you say. It is something you do with your hand.
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01
"Come here. Squeeze my finger, as hard as you can."
Let them squeeze. Then say: "That is your body doing its jobs. Your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your hand squeezing."
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02
"Biscuit died. All of those jobs stopped. They do not start again, and it did not hurt."
Say the real name where Biscuit is, and say the word "died". Not asleep. Not lost. Not passed. If nobody has died and your child is only asking, say it the general way instead: "When somebody dies, all of those jobs stop, and it does not hurt."
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03
"It is forever. That is why we feel sad, and it is okay to be sad."
This is usually the line where your voice goes. Let it go. Your child is watching a grown-up be sad and still be there. If nobody has died: "When it happens, it is forever. That is why people feel so sad, and being sad is allowed."
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04
"It is never, ever your fault. Not anything you did, or said, or even thought."
Say it even if they have not asked. Young children decide, quietly, that a cross word or a mean thought caused it. They almost never tell you. If nobody has died: "And when it does happen one day, it will never be because of anything you did or said or thought."
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05
"The body stops. The love doesn't."
Then stop talking. Hold them. Wait. Whatever they say next tells you what they need.
If they ask something you cannot answer, you are allowed to say: "That is a really big question. Nobody knows for sure. What do you think?" And if they want to know what your family believes, tell them that too, in your own words.
What the five sentences do not cover
Five Sentences Get You Through Tonight. They Do Not Get You Through Thursday.
The five free sentences above answer the question your child asked. They do not answer the six that come after it, and those arrive on their own, later, never at a good moment.
In the car, facing the wrong way, where you cannot stop and hold them.
In the bath. The real fear underneath the first one, and easy to miss.
At ten past six in the morning, in your bed. There is a true answer that does not frighten a child, and it is not the one that comes out first.
Loudly, at Sunday lunch, in front of the person least able to hear it.
It sounds shocking. It is not. It is a small child taking "forever" seriously, exactly as you asked them to.
Three weeks later, out of nothing. Many children never ask it out loud at all.
No answers here, because the honest answer to each one changes completely depending on whether your child is four or eleven. That is what the packs are. Each holds three separate talks written out in full, for ages 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12. Three different talks, not one cut shorter. Then the questions that come back afterwards, including burial and cremation in words a child can hold.
You need one pack: the one that matches what happened in your house. Each pack answers the questions that follow its own goodbye, by age. The six above are the ones that follow a person dying, and they are answered in What Happens When You Die.
What not to say to a grieving child
The Gentlest Words In Your House Are The Ones Doing The Damage.
Nobody sets out to frighten a child. You reach for the softest phrase in the drawer, usually the one your own parents used on you. Here is what five of them sound like from three feet tall.
Sleep is now the thing that takes people away. Do not be surprised when bedtime stops working.
Lost things get found. A small child will quietly wait for somebody to go and look.
What a child hears is "do not ask me". So they stop asking you. They do not stop wondering.
Now he has a job: keep Mummy from being sad. He does it by never crying where you can see him.
A year later a nurse tells the same child they will be put to sleep for their own operation.
Every one of those is a kind sentence. That is exactly why nobody catches it on the way out of their own mouth. The trouble starts about a fortnight later, at bedtime, and by then nobody remembers which sentence did it.
Nobody writes that answer down for you. Every pack carries a Words To Swap page: the loving phrases that land badly, and the sentence to say instead. Read it once and you will hear them everywhere, at the vet, at the school gate, from your own mum.
Who wrote the words
I Am Not An Expert. I Am A Dad Who Got The First One Wrong.
My name is Mike. I am a dad of three, in the UK. Not a child psychologist, and no letters after my name.
My eldest was five. Our dog had died that morning. We sat on the back step, her in her school shoes, me with a cup of tea gone cold, and she asked, "Is he coming back?" I said, "He has gone to sleep." It felt like the kindest sentence in the world. She would not go to bed that night, or most nights for a fortnight after. Sleep was the thing that had taken the dog.
Two years later, a different child, six years old, light off, nobody dead and nothing on the news. A small voice from under the duvet: "Daddy, are you going to die?" I had not one word ready. So I held a finger out in the dark and said, "Squeeze." She squeezed, and I started talking about hearts. That is where the finger squeeze in step one came from, and my three are grown up now and still remember it.
What I worked out the slow way matches what the UK's child bereavement charities tell parents to do: Child Bereavement UK, Winston's Wish, Cruse and Marie Curie all say the same things. Use the real word. Keep it short. Tell the truth. Say out loud that it was not the child's fault. Those principles are right. What no leaflet gives you is the sentence to say at half past seven with a crying child on your knee. So I wrote the sentences out, in order, with the ages in.
Then something I never planned. Friends started asking me. A text late at night: the dog is going to the vet on Saturday, what do I say? A quiet word at the school gate: her grandad has not got long, how do I tell her? I have helped many friends through it, and most said the same thing afterwards. You should write this down. Other parents need it.
So this is me doing what they said: my attempt to help as many parents as I can, and not only the ones with my phone number.
The plan you already have
Every Way Out You Are Thinking Of Has A Hole In It.
You already have a plan for this. Let us go through them honestly, because the instinct behind them is right and the mechanics are not.
"I will be honest and wing it."
Honesty is exactly right. The trouble is the order. Say "his body stopped working" to a four year old who does not know what a body does, and you have told the truth and explained nothing. Children replay the first answer they hear, so winging it means the first answer is whichever arrived fastest. The packs put the steps in the order a child can follow, and put them in your hands before the question.
"I will get a picture book."
Some are beautiful and I would read them. But a picture book is read to your child, in a wood, about a badger. It cannot say your dog's name, or answer what your child asks once the book is shut, which is the harder bit. The packs are words that come out of your mouth, with your names in them.
"I will say nothing and see if it passes."
It does not pass. A child who gets half the truth fills in the rest alone, and they are not gentle about it. That is how a six year old decides in silence that she made Grandad die, because she once said in the car that she did not want to visit him. Silence does not stop the thinking. It only decides whether your child does it with you or alone. Every pack carries the line that stops that thought before it sets, for each age.
"The school will handle it."
School covers the school day. The questions come at bath time, in the car and in the dark, and your child asked you, not the teacher. Every pack answers those. The pet and grandparent packs also hand you a message you can send to school.
"They are too young for this."
If they are old enough to ask, they are old enough for a true answer in small words. That is why each pack splits into 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12: so a four year old gets a four year old's answer, complete and true, not a shortened version of an eleven year old's.
"It feels wrong to buy this when nobody has died."
You bought plasters before anyone came off a bike, and a smoke alarm before anything caught fire. Buy the pack now and you read it in peace, in your own head, rather than out loud with a child crying on your knee.
The method behind every talk
The Pocket Three Method. Four Steps, And The Order Is The Product.
The name comes from step two: three true things, small enough for a child to keep in a pocket. The other three steps are what get those three things to land.
The five sentences on this page are the short version of a four-step method: three of the steps are in the five, and the fourth is the line printed underneath them. Those words are free and they stay free. What the packs sell is the order, and everything hanging off it: three ages, three goodbyes, every talk written out. Here is why the order does the work.
The Finger Squeeze
Before a child can understand a body stopping, they have to feel one working. Their own grip does the teaching, so you never have to explain a heart. "The body stops" becomes something they can feel in their hand.
The Pocket Three
Three lines short enough for a three year old to repeat back to you in the car.
- Onethe body stops, and it does not hurt.
- Twoit is forever, so it is okay to be sad.
- Threeit is never, ever your fault.
Line three stops a child quietly deciding they caused it, and it is the line parents leave out, because the child never asked.
The Honest Don't-Know
You name the question nobody can answer for certain, and it is always the same one: where are they now. You say plainly that nobody knows. Children trust the grown-up who admits the one thing they do not know. Then your family's belief goes into that space, in your words, and nothing in any pack argues with your faith, or with no faith.
The Last True Thing
You end on what survives, not on what stopped, because the ending is the part a child carries to school. The body stops. The love doesn't. It is on the print-and-cut fridge card in every pack, so you both have it the next morning.
Move the steps around and it breaks. A child who hears "forever" before they understand the body has stopped hears a threat. A child who hears it afterwards hears the truth.
Three packs · instant PDF · ages 3 to 12
Which Goodbye Happened In Your House?
Pick the one that is true today. Each pack is a PDF you read on your phone or print at home, £13.99, with a 30-day refund and no reason needed. Every pack holds three separate talks written out in full for ages 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12, covers burial and cremation in words a child can hold, and ends with a Words To Swap page, when to get more help, and a print-and-cut fridge card.
Pack one · 37 pages · £13.99
What Happens When You Die
What to say when a child asks about death, by age
For the question that arrives when nobody has died: a dead bird, a film, the news, something a classmate said at lunch. The talk to have before it is real, so the words are already in the house when it is.
- ✓Three full talks for 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12. Three different talks, not one cut shorter.
- ✓"Are you going to die too?" and "Am I going to die?" Two different fears, answered separately.
- ✓"But who would look after me?" The question underneath the question.
- ✓The body, answered straight: "Is he cold in the ground?", "Does it hurt to be burned?" and "Can we dig her up?"
- ✓The Honest Don't-Know, six ways: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Sikh, non-religious, and "we are still working it out".
- ✓Fifteen questions that come back, with answers, including all six above: "Where is he now?", "Was it because I was naughty?", "When is he coming back?"
- ✓Five things to know before they ask, and what to do if you already said the wrong thing.
Pack two · 26 pages · £13.99
When A Pet Dies
What to say to a child when a pet dies or is put to sleep
For the vet appointment you are dreading, the cat that never came home, the hamster found still on a Monday morning. For many children this is the first death, and what they learn beside that small hole in the garden is what they reach for later, when it is a person.
- ✓The Vet Week. What to say before, whether your child should be in the room, what they will see, and what to say after. Including when cost was part of it.
- ✓The "put to sleep" problem, and the two sentences that fix it.
- ✓Three full talks for 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12.
- ✓When it is sudden, including the words for a child who left the gate open.
- ✓"He has gone to a farm", and how to walk it back.
- ✓Hamsters, fish and guinea pigs. Why you never flush it, and never buy a lookalike replacement.
- ✓A ready-to-send message for school, and what to do if you already said the wrong thing.
Pack three · 43 pages · £13.99
When A Grandparent Dies
What to say to a child when a grandparent dies
For the phone call early in the morning, and the goodbye that has been coming for months. You give this talk with your own heart breaking, so the pack starts with you, before a word to your child.
- ✓When you are grieving too. Getting through the telling while losing your own mum or dad.
- ✓The long goodbye. Hospital and hospice: what they will see and hear, and what to do when they will not go.
- ✓Three full talks for 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12, for before and after.
- ✓"Why didn't Nan know my name?" Dementia, in words a child can hold.
- ✓The funeral. A real choice about going, with preparation. What they will see, a small job they can do, a plan B grown-up, the wake, the chapel of rest.
- ✓The empty chair. The first Christmas, birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day.
- ✓"Who will look after me now?"
- ✓Keeping them close: the memory box, the recipe, the cardigan, and a message for school.
The Complete Set · all three packs, plus the Memory Pages
The Three Packs Bought Separately Cost £41.97. The Complete Set, With The Memory Pages, Costs £29.99.
A childhood rarely contains only one goodbye. The hamster goes in the spring, a year later it is Grandad, and the questions start again, harder, from a child who is now nine and wants specifics.
The Complete Set is all three packs. Nine talks in all, ages 3 to 12, every word written out. 117 pages. Bought one at a time they come to £41.97. The set is £29.99, which is £11.98 less, and it covers the goodbye you are expecting plus the two you are not.
The three packs, plus the Memory Pages
And you cannot lose the £29.99. Read it, and if it does not help, email me within 30 days. No reason needed, refunded in full.
Get the Complete Set · £29.99It also brings The Memory Pages, eleven printable pages for your child to fill in and keep. My favourite thing about you. A letter to you. Draw a picture. Things we did together. A feelings thermometer, for the days they cannot find the word. Questions I still have. They work for a pet or a person.
Now put £29.99 next to the other bill, the one that never arrives in an envelope. A fortnight of bedtimes after "he has gone to sleep". A child carrying a death she quietly believes she caused. A teenager who still cannot cry in front of you, because at six somebody told him to be brave for Mummy.
Free · three pages
Not Buying Today? Then Take The Card.
The first question is rarely the last. It comes back with a mouth full of cereal. It comes back in the supermarket queue. It comes back the next night, word for word, as though you had never answered it. That is normal: it is how a child checks the answer still holds.
So put the answer on the fridge. The Pocket Three Card is three pages, free for an email address. It is the part that is not on this page: the swap sentences to say instead of the soft ones, a short script for the next time it comes out of nowhere, and the Pocket Three printed big enough to read from across the kitchen.
The card downloads straight away, and I send a copy to that address so you still have it next week. After that I email you when a new pack is ready, and nothing else. Every email has an unsubscribe link.
The one pack I have not finished
A Mum. A Dad. A Brother Or A Sister. That Pack Is Not Ready Yet.
Those are the words that have to be exactly right, so it is the one I am writing slowest. It goes on sale when I would hand it to a friend without flinching, and not a day before.
If that is your family this week, please do not wait for me. Go to the people who do this every single day, who are trained for it, and who are free.
If you want to know the day it is finished, take the free card and you will be on the list that hears first.
When words are not enough
Most Of What Grief Does To A Child Is Normal. Some Of It Needs More Than Words From Me.
Normal looks like this: sadness that comes and goes, clinginess at the school gate, the same question asked ten times, suddenly worrying that you will die, tears one minute and football the next, and bedtime getting harder for a while.
Talk to your GP or your child's school if:
- the worry or the sadness keeps getting bigger instead of slowly getting smaller;
- your child stops eating, sleeping or playing;
- they talk about wanting to die, or wanting to be with the one who died;
- or you are simply worried. That is reason enough.
Free support in the UK:
- Childline, 0800 1111, any time, for your child to ring themselves.
- Child Bereavement UK, for the child and for the grown-ups.
- Winston's Wish, for bereaved children and young people.
- Cruse Bereavement Support.
- Blue Cross Pet Bereavement Support, for when it is a pet.
These packs are one parent's method, written down. They are not counselling, and they are not a replacement for counselling.
The promise
If It Does Not Help, Email Me And Every Penny Comes Back.
A pack is £13.99. Put that next to a year of a child who will not let you turn the landing light off.
Read it, and if it does not help, email me within 30 days. No reason needed, full refund. I am not going to haggle with a parent in the worst week of their year.
Before you buy
What Parents Ask Before They Buy.
Which pack do I need?
Nobody has died and your child just asked: What Happens When You Die. A pet is ill, has died or gone missing: When A Pet Dies. Nan or Grandad is ill or has died: When A Grandparent Dies. More than one, or you want it all in the drawer first: the Complete Set at £29.99.
Grandad is ill but still alive. Is it too early?
No. When A Grandparent Dies starts before the death, with the long goodbye: telling your child it is serious, and the hospital and hospice visits.
What ages is it for?
Three to twelve. Every pack has a separate talk written out in full for 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12.
Is it religious?
No. Every talk stops at the one question nobody can answer for sure and leaves a space for what your family believes, in your words. Nothing argues with your faith, or with no faith.
We call her Grandma, not Nan. Does that matter?
No. The words you change are marked in yellow: names, he or she, and your family's belief.
What format is it, and how do I get it?
PDFs, downloaded straight after you pay. A single pack is one PDF. The Complete Set is four: the three packs and the Memory Pages, on one download page. Read them on your phone, or print them at home on A4.
Should my child go to the funeral?
Most UK bereavement charities say yes, if the child wants to, and only if somebody prepares them first. The choice has to be real, which means they can say no without anybody being disappointed in them. When A Grandparent Dies walks through it: what to describe beforehand, what a coffin and a crematorium curtain look like to a child, giving them a small job, and having a plan B grown-up who can take them out if it becomes too much.
Is it normal for my child to keep asking the same question?
Yes. Young children check an answer by asking for it again, sometimes for weeks, sometimes word for word as though you had never said it. It is not that they did not hear you. Give the same calm answer every time. What Happens When You Die has fifteen of the questions that come back, with an answer to start from for each one.
What age can a child understand that death is forever?
Most children grasp that death is permanent somewhere between five and seven, though it varies a lot and it is not a switch. Under five, many children think it is reversible, like sleep or going away. That is why every pack has three separate talks, for 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 12, rather than one talk cut shorter.
Did you use AI to write these?
I wrote the method, decided what goes in, and read and approved every line before it went into a pack. I used AI as a tool to draft and tidy the wording, and to keep it in line with mainstream UK bereavement guidance. I would rather tell you that than have you find out.
Before you go up to bed
The Body Stops. The Love Doesn't.
That line is on the fridge card in every pack, and it is the one you will still be saying next week.
Your voice will probably go somewhere in the middle. Let it. Your child is not learning that you are falling apart. They are learning that a sad thing can happen in this house and everybody is still here at breakfast.
P.S. If the question has not come yet, you still have the quiet version of this: read the words once, in your own head, before you need them. Tonight is a good night for it.