Death is a tricky subject to approach when it comes to kids. At what age do you bring it up or do you even mention it at all?

We’ve had deaths in the family since my boys were born but they’ve never attended a funeral and up until recently, I don’t really think my oldest son, 5-year-old Ben, had even grasped the concept.

When his pet fish died, Ben just said he was “all gone” — a reaction my husband and I just rolled with. There were no tears, no grieving, he just wanted a new fish and we obliged.

But the other day he learned about another death, and it was all my fault.

Ben asked if we could “go and see the dinosaurs.”

Uh-oh.

It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that he thought dinosaurs still existed but from his point of view, I suppose it makes sense. After all, there’s all kinds of movies about dinosaurs, books about dinosaurs, toy dinosaurs everywhere. Of course he thought they were real.

“Ben, we can’t go see the dinosaurs, they’re all gone now,” I told him.

“They’ll come back later?” he asked, his eyes full of hope and excitement.

And then I crushed his dreams.

“No, Ben. Honey, they all died. A long time ago.”

I could see the childhood wonder slowly fading from his face to be replaced with the cold cynicism of understanding as what I was saying to him slowly sunk in.

Let me back up …

Ben knew dragons and unicorns and stuff weren’t real. We always explained they were “pretend.” But dinosaurs didn’t really fall into that category. They aren’t pretend — they’re real. Or, they were.

When he began to really get interested in them, we encouraged him. We read books about the different kinds that roamed the Earth and he spent hours coloring pictures of them in coloring books.

Last year we took him to the dinosaur expo in Greenville that had the 30-foot tall animatronics — again, he understood that these dinosaurs weren’t real.

I just didn’t understand that he thought they just existed elsewhere.

When we watched movies like Jurassic Park, it only confirmed his beliefs. After all, even to adults, the dinosaurs in that movie look real.

How do you explain extinction to a 5-year-old?

I don’t know. But I can tell you how not to do it …

“See, Ben, dinosaurs were around millions and millions of years ago — back when there were no people at all,” I began. “There were no buildings, no roads, nothing like that. Some dinosaurs ate plants and some ate other dinosaurs.”

“Like the T-Rex!” he chimed in.

“Yes. Like the T-Rex. But one day a huge rock from space called a meteorite crashed on Earth and it sent up a huge dust cloud. The cloud was so big it covered the sky and wouldn’t let the sunlight come in. So all the plants died. Since all the plants were gone, the dinosaurs that ate them didn’t have any food.”

“They were really hungry?” he asked.

“Yes. But there were no more plants, so they all died. Then the dinosaurs that ate the other dinosaurs died too because all their food was gone now.”

Tears began to well up.

“Even the T-Rex?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry kiddo. But this all happened a really long time ago.”

I could see him working it through in his head before coming up with his conclusion: “A cloud killed the dinosaurs?”

“Kind of. Yes. A really big cloud after the rock from space hit.”

In retrospect, telling a kid that “a cloud” killed all the dinosaurs wasn’t the best idea because shortly after we had this conversation the weather turned sour and we had three days of rain, during all of which Ben was convinced we were in mortal danger.

I know honesty is supposed to be the best policy but when it comes to raising kids, I really think he’s better off with me just lying to him.

At least until he’s older.

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Strickly Speaking

Kasie Strickland

Kasie Strickland is a staff writer for The Sentinel-Progress and can be reached at kstrickland@civitasmedia.com. Views expressed in this column are those of the writer only and do not necessarily represent the newspaper’s opinion.