Activity time: 30 minutes

Invite participants to consider their own experiences with death when they were young. Call attention to the posted questions and invite them to share responses in pairs. Allow ten minutes for the conversation, letting them know when five minutes have elapsed so that they can switch speaker and listener roles. Then lead a large group conversation, asking:

• As an adult, have you ever spoken to a child as an adult about death? How well did that conversation go?
• What would help you be better able to have such a conversation?
• What suggestions in the reading you prepared for this session struck you as most helpful?

Allow 15 minutes for this discussion. Then explain that there are at least two different kinds of conversations about death that they might have with a child. One conversation is about death as a part of life, a conversation that might happen when one comes upon a dead creature in the wild or when they hear about death through a story, a movie, or the death of a friend’s grandparent. The other conversation happens when a child is grieving the death of a family member, a friend, or a pet.