My Daughter Is Curious About Death. How Do We Talk About It?

Summary

Podcast Summary: “My Daughter Is Curious About Death. How Do We Talk About It?”

Talkaboutable with Dr. Susan Swick
Lemonada Media, June 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on a candid, heartfelt conversation between Dr. Susan Swick (child and adolescent psychiatrist, host, and mother of four) and Rosie Hunter (clinical psychologist, business consultant, army veteran, and single mom to five-year-old Eleanor). The pair unpack how parents can talk with children about death, grief, and maintaining connections with loved ones who have passed away. Through Rosie’s real-life experiences with her daughter, Eleanor (named after Rosie’s late mom), the episode explores strategies for raising emotionally attuned children—and why engaging openly with big feelings is so important.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Family Landscape & Emotional Inheritance

• Rosie describes Eleanor, her extroverted, highly verbal five-year-old, and the multi-generational dynamic in her family.
• The family’s history of high-achieving, “stoic, composed” women influences Rosie’s own parenting style and reflection on her upbringing.

Rosie on her daughter Eleanor:

“She fills up any space she’s in, and she really is thinking out loud about, like, how to be kind, and are bugs dangerous? And, you know, what happens when people die, for example? She just is very busy.” (05:13)

• Rosie details the loss of her mother (the “OG Eleanor”) to cancer in 2019, just before Eleanor was born, and speaks about her guilt and longing for her daughter to have a deeper connection with extended family.

Introducing “Spirit Grandma” and Developmentally Clear Grief Narratives

• Rosie shares that she’s modeled her approach to her mother’s memory after the representation of ancestral connections in "Moana," where a “spirit grandma” guides the heroine.

“My mother hated Disney… but we were watching Moana, and there’s a way that they keep the spirit grandma alive… As soon as I had Eleanor, I was like, okay, I think I want to model in that way.” (12:47)

• Eleanor associates butterflies with her spirit grandma and has woven stories and objects (like her grandmother’s old ring) into daily life.

Children’s Curiosity About Death

• The hosts discuss Eleanor’s shift from imaginative sharing (“Spirit Grandma gave me this ring”) to deeper, more pointed questions about death, such as:

“She looked at me and goes, 'How old were you when your mom died?'” (16:25)

• Dr. Swick affirms that children around ages five to seven begin to cognitively understand the finality of death, even before it resonates emotionally.

“Actually, right around six or so, five to seven… Kids emotionally don’t get it usually, but cognitively they get it. They get that [the person is] not coming back in the concrete sense, in the physical sense, and that everyone dies.” (19:18)

Modeling Emotional Attunement—Without Overburdening the Child

• Rosie articulates her desire for Eleanor to remain empathic and curious, but not to feel responsible for her parents’ emotions.

“I love that she sort of thinks about us, me and her and her dad, and our feelings to a certain extent. But... she doesn’t see our feelings as her responsibility… I want to keep that going.” (21:30)

• Dr. Swick highlights the importance of bearing discomfort together as a family, riding out sadness and anxiety rather than suppressing or fixing it.

“Every time your child is sad, stressed or worried is an opportunity to teach them to ride a bike… and you are the training wheels.” (28:10)

The Role of Worry and Courage in Childhood

• Both agree anxiety is “an uncomfortable but essential part of life”—and children benefit from learning to tolerate it, rather than avoid it.
• Rosie shares her method of “exposure therapy” by gardening with Eleanor, encouraging curiosity about butterflies (spirit grandma) and unlearning fear of bees.

“She’s lately got this thing from her... friends... she’s now kind of afraid of bugs. But she’s curious about pollinators… I sort of secretly hope she gets stung by a bee this spring so we can survive it and talk about [it.]” (30:09)

Grief as a Continuing (“Worth It”) Relationship

• Rosie and Dr. Swick agree that grief isn’t something that ever resolves completely—rather, relationships with those who have died continue to evolve.

“Death has never been the end of your relationship with your parents. That’s right... her friends are still having relationships with her. My brother and sister’s relationships with her are evolving. And now this little person has come along to start a whole new relationship with her.” (36:04)

• A key insight: the hardships of love (such as loss and grief) are “worth it”—being open with children about these feelings allows both parent and child to grow.

“When we love people (and cats), part of that means that we really feel sad when they’re not physically here with us anymore. That is hard and it’s worth it.” (33:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Chosen Parenting Style:
  “I attempted not to gender socialize too much… this person turned out to be like... she wears tutus to her soccer practice.” (04:14, Rosie)

• On Understanding Death:
  “How old were you when your mom died?” (16:25, Eleanor via Rosie)

• Advice for Facing Difficult Questions:
  “I have to say, you know, say more. But I know I can’t turn away from that conversation because it makes me uncomfortable.” (29:31, Rosie)

• On Parenting Attitude:
  “Feelings and gangster can go together. That it doesn’t have to be either-or.” (24:12, Dr. Swick)

• On Grief’s Continuance:
  “Death has never been the end of your relationship with your parents.” (36:04, Rosie)

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Important Segments with Timestamps

• Introduction to Rosie and Eleanor, Family Dynamics: 00:58–09:37
• Childhood Temperaments, Parenting Styles, and Grief Origins: 09:37–15:43
• Eleanor’s Growing Curiosity About Death: 15:33–17:36
• Developmental Understanding of Death in Children: 17:36–21:30
• Worry, Responsibility, and Emotional Attunement: 21:30–28:09
• Courage, Exposure, and Handling Anxiety: 28:09–34:01
• Grief’s Evolution and Maintaining Connections: 34:01–36:42

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Speaker Attributions

• Dr. Susan Swick (“B”): Host, child and adolescent psychiatrist, interjects clinical perspective and personal stories.
• Rosie Hunter (“A”): Guest, clinical psychologist, provides lived experience and reflections as a parent.
• Eleanor: Rosie’s daughter, quoted via Rosie’s retelling.

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Tone & Takeaways

Warm, candid, at times humorous, and notably compassionate. The episode weaves together clinical knowledge and lived parental experience. The message: it’s not just okay, but healthy and essential to talk openly with children about death and grief. When parents allow curiosity, big questions, and difficult feelings to be “talkaboutable,” children become resilient, emotionally intelligent, and deeply connected—both to the living and to those they’ve lost.

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For listeners, this episode provides actionable ways to approach a child’s questions about death, alongside reassurance that emotional messiness is normal, and that strong familial bonds can bridge even loss itself.

Transcript

[A]

Lemonada

[B]

Talk About Able is produced by Lemonada Media in partnership with Montage Health and their Ohana center for Child and Family Mental Health. And it's made possible through funding from the Montage Health Foundation.

[A]

The other day, she came with one of my mother's old rings. I don't know where she got it from. And I said, eleanor, what is that? Where did you get that? And she said, oh, my spirit. Grandma gave it to me.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

She is like, really? She. Yeah, right.

[B]

I'm like, watch out.

[A]

First of all, I'm creeped out by that.

[B]

Watch out.

[A]

Because I'm like, I don't believe in ghosts. Yeah. I was, like, freaked out by it, but I'm also just like, okay. That's interesting that she sort of. She has this sort of relationship to objects that kind of relate to her. That's kind of interesting. And she thinks that it's personal and I don't want to get involved in it in some ways.

[B]

I'm Dr. Susan Swick and this is Talk About Able. Today I'm speaking with Rosie Hunter. She's a clinical psychologist, business consultant, army veteran, and owner of the startup Test Wolf. As if that wasn't enough, she's also mom to a five year old daughter named Eleanor. Rosie got divorced last year and shares custody with her ex who lives just down the road. And they named Eleanor after Rosie's mom, who passed away from cancer in 2019, before she was even born. Since Eleanor started talking, Rosie has been working to keep her own mother present in everyday moments with Eleanor. And as she grows, Rosie wants to make sure she's doing this in a way that fits with where her daughter is at developmentally so Eleanor can build her own relationship with the grandma she never met. This is a conversation about grief and about raising emotionally attuned kids and why the most important things in life, the people we love, the big feelings, good and bad, and even the bugs in the garden are worth experiencing. Rosie Hunter, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. I'm so excited to get to hear about your wonderful family and being a mental health professional parent, which I'm sure I will have lots of questions for you. This is a two way street, so I always like to start by finding out who's at home. Who's in your home?

[A]

Who's in my home today? Just me and my cat, Richard Nixon.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

He's a Siamese and he's gorgeous.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And he has become a wonderful big brother to my daughter.

[C]

Oh.

[B]

How old is he?

[A]

How Old are you, Nixon?

[B]

He's nine. Does he answer?

[A]

He's nine years old. You know, we talk a lot, so I hope that he doesn't make an appearance, but he might.

[B]

All right, so I have so many questions, but I want to first just pause and hear a little bit more about your daughter. How old is she?

[A]

Eleanor? Eleanor's five. All of my friends laugh because I look at her and I think, why does she talk so much? And they go, are you kidding? You're kidding about that, right? And so she is like hilarious to me. I've always kind of been timid about children. You know, I didn't have her until I was about 38. And my mother was a very stern person. She was not a baby talker or anything like that. I had this sense when I was a kid from the very beginning that it was a hard job. So I wasn't rushing to it in any sense. And I love how hard, like, how hard it is. I think it's. It's fascinating. And she's just like a really energetic, kind of charming human. You know, she's really good at being a cat sister. She's trying to be a good friend to her friends.

[B]

Where is she?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Is she in preschool or.

[A]

She's in preschool.

[B]

Tell me a little bit more about her personality. What is she like?

[A]

I attempted not to gender socialize too much. My mother in law notoriously said that her nursery was like a sanitarium because it was kind of white neutrals, you know, a little sage green here and there. But this person turned out to be like. Like, she wears tutus to her soccer practice.

[B]

Yep, yep.

[A]

And I'm like, I didn't do that to her. I don't know how she got that way, but I indulge it. And she just, she's very assertive. She's very extroverted, which is, you know, hard for me because I know that it's hard to be so people oriented. And the other women in my family are stoic, composed, kind of, I would say, much more introverted than I am. And that was always the tension with me and my mother too, that she thought there was some danger in being so extroverted. But I think it's. I love that she, you know, is like the same speed as I am.

[B]

Totally, totally.

[A]

It makes me feel less judged, but, you know, but she's such a funny person. She fills up any space that she's in and she really is thinking out loud about, like, how to be kind and are bugs dangerous? And, you know, what happens when people die, for example? She just is very busy.

[B]

She's hungry. It sounds like she's hungry. She really is like just leaning in to learning everything, which includes people. She wants to have people. She wants to be connected. She wants to learn that sort of deep curiosity that's like gravity for some kids. That's fantastic. Okay, so if you had to describe what you think her sort of greatest. I think I'm hearing a little bit about them, but her great gifts. And I know at five, you're only beginning to see the green shoots of her great talents and gifts, but what would you say they are right now?

[A]

I think she's curious.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think she. Okay, not to sound too shrinky. I think she's sort of high need for cognition. You know, she doesn't mind saying why and why and why. I truly just love this sprightly, sort of aggressively enthusiastic kind of approach that she has to things. And I don't care what she really applies it to because I think that is the gift. And so we've been. I've been fortunate to end up in this neighborhood that is full of just really interesting women of a certain age and gardeners and people who walk and talk a lot and local stores and things like that. But I feel deeply, deeply guilty that she's not surrounded by our cousins and you know, deeply guilty that she's not surrounded by gardens. Grandparents on a day to day basis.

[B]

Yep, yep. So maybe that brings us to the thing that's been sort of rattling around in your head or your heart sort of percolating. Worry about her. Tell us about your family.

[A]

Oh, gosh. So I was raised by lawyers that you're related to. Maybe that's. Yes. Fortunately that were married to each other for 20 years. My mother, OG Eleanor, as we say, waited a very long time to have children for that generation. She was in her 30s and my sister is a year older and my twin brother and I were born a year later.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Okay. Yes.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And she took 10 years off from her law degree to survive, I think having three. I think that's fair to say what kind of lawyer. She did a lot of different things. She was a, you know, a Supreme Court clerk. She was a lobbyist for Anheuser Busch. When she went back to work, she was an administrative law judge and she retired as the executive director of the Florida Board of Bar Examiners.

[B]

Wow. Okay. So a slacker, your mom?

[A]

Total slacker. Total slacker. My twin brother's a lawyer. He went to Georgetown. My sister went to Business school at Wharton and went to Brown. I'm the slacker in the family. It's awesome. Oh, my gosh.

[B]

And what about your dad?

[A]

My dad's adorable. He was her fourth child. Is that okay to say? You tell me. So me and him and my brother are about on the same energy wavelength. And then my sister and my mom were the calm, focused ones. And my dad is still going. He just turned 75. He had a birthday party with 100 people at it because he's always lived within 90 minutes of where he was born, which is Apalachicola, Florida. Wow.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And the idea that, you know, I'm just, like, dumbfounded. All of us are. And I know this is weird to say, but my mother lived such a chaste kind of life in a lot of ways that the fact that he's still here and she's not is a confusing. You know, women also outlive men oftenly. It's a confusing reality.

[B]

When did you lose your mom?

[A]

20. 19. So I got back from deployment and she had had an eight year battle with cancer, which we'll put a pin in that because, I mean, I think that was actually a great achievement of hers because it made me, my brother, and my sister like a teen forever. And Eleanor was born, or I got pregnant maybe within the year after she died.

[B]

So a long battle with cancer. But it sounds like your mom was an extraordinary woman and a formidable force to be reckoned with. So a surprise nonetheless.

[A]

Yeah, it's weird how somebody can be. I mean, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer, like, eight years before she died. I can't tell you how many times she would look over at me and my sister at, like, meetings at Moffitt Cancer center or at MD Anderson or something, and she would look over and be like, go walk around. You're gonna be so upset. I'm trying to take notes about it, like, it's fine. You know, she just. Yeah, she used to look over and she'd say, look at these people here with their old man husbands. And she's like, I'm here with my spinster daughters. And she was so proud.

[B]

All right, so she was a formidable woman.

[A]

She was formidable. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Rosie came to today's conversation with a big question on her mind. How can she talk with her daughter about her grandmother? As she grows up, she wants Eleanor to develop a real connection with her grandmother, the OG Eleanor, without actually putting her own grief or her personal feelings and history onto that relationship. There's such a beautiful story in here with your mom. And how, in a way, she's an awesome figure to you and that you maybe it sounds like you see yourself a bit as a counterpoint to her as sort of the lively, energetic, playful. I mean, anyone looking at your CV would be like, what? No, you're extraordinary, professional, accomplished woman who's had a tour of duty in Afghanistan and who has a doctoral degree and is running a business and consult. I mean, it's incredible. But in terms of your family narrative, you were the tutu on the soccer field. You're playful and engaging and social.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And now you have this beautiful tutu on the soccer field that is yours, who's named for your extraordinary mother. And tell me a little bit more about. I mean, there may be all sorts of thoughts and questions and feelings we have about how we raise our kids in a way that is grounded in, but not a duplicate of our own experiences growing up.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And how we answer their questions and keep them tethered to that story, even when we live so far away. Yeah. Does Eleanor have questions about who she is or is she. Has OG Eleanor become a character in the sort of constellation at home because she hears talk about her and especially being far away from your siblings and your dad and from her other set. I don't know if you're actually parents are still alive.

[A]

Yes, very much so.

[B]

They are. But still, you guys live far away from grandparents.

[A]

But I will credit. So I'll say this. My mother hated Disney. She was from Winter Park, Florida, when Disney came to town. She has drama from like that, but she hated Disney. But we were watching Moana, and there's a way that they keep the spirit grandma alive on Moana. As soon as I sort of had Eleanor, I was like, okay, I think that's. I think I want to model in that way. And so she's always talked about her spirit grandmother in ways that are hilarious and charming, but also just recently, even more kind of profound. And so I feel like there's something happening in their relationship that I'm outside of, and I love that.

[B]

After this short break, Rosie shares a moment that caught her off guard when Eleanor asked a question about her grandma's death. Stay with us.

[C]

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[A]

Well, one of the reasons I was looking forward to this conversation is because I have started to see this transition from. For her understanding a range of emotions. We started out with spirit grandma being a fun, present thing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

She associates butterflies with her spirit grandma, and we have the monarch migration, and she loves that. Oh, spirit grandma's headed to Mexico for the winter. I'm like, fine, whatever. Now she spontaneously will say things like, like, the other day, she came with one of my mother's old rings. I don't know where she got it from. And I said, eleanor, what is that? Where did you get that? And she said, oh, my spirit grandma gave it to me.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

She is like, really? She. Yeah, right.

[B]

I'm like, watch out.

[A]

First of all, I'm creeped out by that because I'm like, I don't believe in ghosts. Yeah. I'm, like, creeped out by it. But I'm also just like, okay, that's interesting that she sort of. She has this sort of relationship to objects that kind of relate to her. That's kind of interesting. And she thinks that it's personal and I don't want to get involved in it in some ways.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then recently we were in the car and she looked at me and she goes, how old were you when your mom died?

[B]

Oh.

[A]

And I was like, yep. I didn't even realize that she, like, fully understood that this her, like, was my mom. Like, she was the one that gave me lollipops. She was the one that did all. You know, she suddenly had this connection to that. And she just kind of looked at me and I was like, well, it was 20, 19. I just started doing the math. I'm like, how old was I? You know? And she has done other things where she saw me upset about something. And honestly, it was probably just like a new Brandy Carlisle song or something. And she said, are you upset about my spirit, grandma? Because she somehow just fundamentally understood that that was like just a source of heartbreak in my life.

[B]

Yeah, it is.

[A]

But I've never really. I've never really said that to her, exposed her to. I don't know how she pulled it all together. And so she's had moments like this where suddenly she's poignant and clued into it, and those are happening more. So I'm looking forward to our conversation because I realize we're going to go from my Moana approach to things into something that's going to have to be a little more sophisticated, like help Dr. Swick.

[B]

But I don't think you need a Dr. Swick for this. I actually think Moana was a great launch pad. I mean, I think the thing that can be so compelling about great children's movies, about great animated movies, and I will admit right here that I am the parent, that my kids would always just be rolling their eyes when we watched Moana or Coco. They're like, mom's gonna sob. Mom is just gonna be a train wreck after this movie.

[A]

Encanto. Come on.

[B]

Encanto. Oh, my gosh. Because they tell elemental stories of love, connection and loss. And it's a child centered story. So they're not just. They're not war stories. They're stories about children and losing a parent or a grandparent or a best friend. And it really sounds like Eleanor. Eleanor, too has an incredible instrument when it comes to her sort of emotional intelligence, her ability to feel and to identify what she's feeling and to notice in other people and to like, you're saying she's so interested in her friends. Not so many five year old kids are all that interested in their friends. Like, at 5, there's a lot of parallel play. Right? That's what we call it. It's not necessarily collaborative or it doesn't survive conflict very easily when they're five. Right. They just sort of move back to solitary play. But it sounds like Eleanor is really skilled at enjoying a connection, at attending to it, at noticing it. So she's that curiosity she has is vivid when it comes to people.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you've created an environment in which she is telling a rich story that is not made up, it's real about sort of where she comes from. Even though she doesn't have a party with a hundred cousins at it. Right. But she has the narrative and she's cultivating a narrative in which who she comes from is also really important. And she may have a five year old version of that right now and it may be the soft, sweet, sicker grandma that is animating it. And that's fine. That is fine. And she's smarter than the average 5 year old when it comes to wanting, maybe even understanding the finality of death. That's a big one. But actually right around six or so, five to seven. Yeah. Kids actually, they don't emotionally get it usually, but cognitively they get it. They get that they're not coming back in the concrete sense, in the physical sense, and that everyone dies. That begins to dawn on them. So I wonder about our really intelligent, thoughtful Eleanor noticing that you're sad and being thoughtful about that and curious and even. Do you think she worries a little about what if something happens to my mom? You know, how old will I be now? That is a little less likely in your typical 5 year old, right? That's more like maybe 15. But some 15s are so self absorbed that they don't project out into the future. They're just like, this is how it feels for me today and it's your fault. But yeah, but she may be wondering if this is what happens, if people lose their parents and they have to then raise kids and maybe aunties come together and raise kids and that's our family. What does that mean? What will that mean for me?

[A]

I think, you know, I think Dr. Swick, I, and I'm sure you have this experience as a professional too. I do not want her worried about. Like, I love that she sort of thinks about us, me and her and her dad and our feelings to a certain extent. But I love how gangster she is. To me it's very clear that at least in this moment, she doesn't see our feelings as her responsibility. That's good.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

Sort of in the least. And I want to keep that, you know, going because I was such a deeply feeling kid that kids have always made me sad. Right. There's, you know, like childhood to me. It's not like this sort of like

[B]

sunny like to me it's just.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. It's not like oh, you go and you play all day. You, whatever. You know, to me, childhood was emotional and it was, it was sort of like, it was tough. My mom did a lot of like, calm down, hush. Be, you know, just like, be still. Why are you smiling? Like, calm. You know, I was like, very much like, sort of. And so I'm trying to like, not, you know, I had kids because my ex husband said, you know, I think we should do this. And I was like, okay. Like this makes. And she's perfect and lovely, but I'm not about to be out having like tons, tons more. Because childhood to me looks hard to the naked eye. It looks hard.

[B]

No. And you're saying actually it doesn't just look hard. You're like. It is harrowing that you had.

[A]

It's like terrifying. Yeah, I respect her for being so gangster.

[B]

Sit tight. We're gonna take another short break and then we'll be right back with Rosie. I'm going to observe something here, which is that, that both can go together. That to the outside eye, I would look at you as an adult and say you're gangster. I mean, lady, you were in Afghanistan for a year. You divorced a year ago, you lost your mom five years ago, and you're smiling and working and you have a startup. And I mean, in my book, that's incredible. That is serious stuff. And that feelings and gangster can go together. That it doesn't have to be either or. And you mentioned something right at the start about how your mom was stoic and stern and serious and not a baby talk mama, that she wasn't there to raise soft babies. She was raising warriors.

[A]

Which is funny. Cause none of us would. We all cry all the time. We don't see ourselves.

[B]

Well, that's the point that we, as parents, you don't get to pick. And most human beings have a capacity, and especially over time, to do incredibly difficult things, right? To be tough, to be disciplined, to be tenacious. And that ability is easy, even more profound and can be deployed to incredible effect when it is tethered to strong feelings, to emotional attunement, to oneself and other people. And remember, you may feel like childhood is. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I'm gonna at risk of abusing a metaphor that it's a battlefield filled with landmines that are just.

[A]

And I had the easiest childhood ever too, but I'm still like, both things are true.

[B]

You didn't. You weren't in a refugee camp. And childhood is hard. Childhood is a. Is a steep learning curve every day and Everything you master is in the rear view mirror and you're on to the next. It is no rest. And I would say that when your daughter is worried or is sad because it's happening now and it's going to happen because she's smart. Right. And that worry. And you do this professionally, anxiety is actually an uncomfortable but essential part of life, right?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

We experience anxiety about things that are uncertain in the usually near future that require our attention. And if we didn't experience anxiety, we wouldn't give them our attention. And we might get in trouble.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

We might get eaten by a lion. We might, you know, like, things could happen. And we need help from psychologists or psychiatrists or good coaches. When that worry kind of takes on a life of its own and keeps us from sort of performing the best we can. You need some worry to be focused and to be engaged and prepared. And sometimes too much worry tips you over into paralysis and avoidance and all those bad things.

[A]

But.

[B]

But she is a blessed 5 year old with a. I mean, it sounds like her garden is full of multiple. Sorry, I'm gonna apologize right now. I have metaphors that kind of go all over the place. Battlefield garden. We haven't even done sports yet, but maybe Moana. So just bear with me. But you get to just see what starts to sprout in her garden. We don't know yet. We don't know what her great gifts are. We see some and there's others that just haven't even sprouted. That is the amazing thing about working with and raising. Oh, my God, Raising children. But worry is gonna be a part of the package for this kid, because she is so. When a kid is so attuned and observant and emotionally attuned and observant, they are gonna experience. And especially in the Next, let's say 10 years. These are the anxiety years. Sort of 6 to 12, 6 to 13. Peak anxiety for kids and normal development because they have cognitive maturity enough to understand cause and effect, to understand the finality of death, to understand that they might say something to mom and it hurts her feelings and it made her cry. And they're like, wow, that's a big deal. I could do that. And they don't yet have emotional maturity to be able to bear that life brings blessings and it brings some burdens. It brings some things that are unfair. It brings loss. And that's a lifetime's work. Right. Learning how to bear that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I talk with parents sometimes about the idea that you want to think about every time your child is sad, stressed or worried is an opportunity to teach them to ride a bike. It's just like teaching them to ride a bike. And you are the critical person, you are the training wheels because you're the expert on your child and you know who Eleanor is and that she's going to care about people. She's intellectually rigorous. It sounds like I'm just going to go out on a limb. And I wouldn't say that normally about 5 year olds, but it sounds like she is uncommonly verbal for a five year old. And she brings a degree of rigor for consistency and precision. And she's also really attuned to people, which is going to mean she has a lot of worry about feelings and about other people's feelings and maybe about events, maybe about losing people, maybe about what it's gonna be to lose her own parents or to lose some of her other grandparents. And she's gonna ask questions that are gonna be shockingly unsettling to you because she's.

[A]

Or she says crazy and she says things like, you're gonna be really sad when Nixon dies. I'm like, first of all, don't you threaten my cat. I know.

[B]

Does she know something?

[A]

You know, that cat is the center of my life.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

But it's just kind of. And then she just lets it hang in there. And she kind of looks at me and she goes, you'll probably be more sad if anything happened to me, but if Nixon died. And I'm just like, interesting. And she says with kind of a smile on her face. But I know that I can't turn away from that conversation because it makes me uncomfortable. I have to say, you know, say more. But I'm sorry to interrupt too, because you were saying something about gardening and that just people ask me all the time kind of like, you know, people wonder what it's like to be raised by a psychologist and what that's like. But here's my example for this spring. She's lately got this thing from her. I think it comes from her friends or maybe you can tell me it's developmentally appropriate. But she's like now kind of afraid of bugs.

[B]

That's interesting.

[A]

But she's curious about pollinators. So right after we get done talking, I'm gonna go right out my yard and plant all this stuff that attracts bees and butterflies and things. Butterflies, because she associates that with the spirit grandma and bees because she's sort of in a phase of being afraid of. So she's gonna have to spend more time in the yard with me.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Cause she's getting her own exposure therapy to these. Is that wrong? Tell me, Dr. Slick, if that's wrong. But I sort of secretly hope she gets stung by a bee this spring so we can survive it and talk about. I mean, I don't think she has an allergy.

[B]

I love. I mean, look, I think it is.

[A]

That's evil, isn't it?

[B]

I mean, I don't know. It could be. It's evil if you derive delight from watching her suffer. So I doubt that's what's happening.

[A]

No, absolutely not. But I love her courage. I love her courage.

[B]

And you're helping her to build courage. Right. And you. I know I do this as a parent when I am worried about my kids, I tend to lean back on what I know, which often is clinical, which sometimes is helpful, and sometimes it's too clinical, rather. And so what I would love to share with you, and I wanna hear from you, but as now, I'm just sharing this with you, not as a clinic expert, but as a mom of four kids who leaned on maybe clinical interventions that. What's a little distinct about raising a child is that we get to show up and be in the garden with them, be an expert on them and bear discomfort with them. Bear their discomfort. If they notice our discomfort, we can roll with that. I mean, I imagine you would love to protect her from feeling some of what you felt as a child, and that maybe what you felt as a child was more about who you were, your big emotions, your big curious, thoughtful mind and being maybe clipped a little bit, sort of told, like, don't feel that. Those are big feelings. And we have to. You know, a stoic parent, a tutu child, can be a tough fit sometimes. And that the key is not to be all tutus all the time. And it's certainly not to remove worry or to pave the way so there's no sadness or sorrow or worry, but instead to be kind of next to her with it. And in fact, if she's such a smart, articulate kid, who's gonna ask you? And you're the expert, she's gonna ask you questions like, are you worried about this? You're gonna be sad when Nixon dies? She's asking you a lot of questions. And for you to kind of lean in and be like, yeah, when we love people and cats, part of that means that we really feel sad when they're not physically here with us anymore, that is hard and it's worth it. We love them so much. And there's without it having to be the end of a conversation. But that often these are not things you fix. These are sort of facts in the world that we're all learning to bear in different ways as adults and that you and I, both as clinicians, have learned how to support those that are stuck in a struggle with them to get unstuck. But we're not necessarily healing the fact that loss still happens, that injury happens. We don't have that power.

[A]

You are so right, Dr. Swick. I'm so grateful that she came along at the part of my life where the sentence, the end of that sentence that you just mentioned, that it's worth it part. Like, I think early in my career, even as a provider, even as a psychologist, I think I took myself so seriously that I would have been in that sort of don't be afraid kind of. I wouldn't have really fully understood that part. And now that I have her and she's here and she's all that she is, I'm so grateful that the sentence ends in that, like, yeah, mommy doesn't like mosquitoes. I don't like that snake in our garden. I don't like this. And the outdoors and gardening and just learning all that. This and spending this time together in the sunshine. It's worth it. And that's what we're not. You know, we're not gonna let the buns take the outdoors from us. And they're hoping some bugs are good bugs. Yeah. And so I really appreciate that combination of, like, the maternal thing that came along and then the training and they come together to get the it's worth it part of the sentence. And I think that applies to grief, Right. Like, that's very much the bugs and grief. Right.

[B]

A hundred percent. And that grief is not something that can be hurried along. And in a way that's maybe full of grace, having little Eleanor with you and having a narrative about her spirit grandma that is focused on a part of your mom that wasn't the center of your experience of her when you were younger at least, but had to be something true about her, right. If it was sort of bubbling up to the surface in her last, you know, few, I don't know, months or years with you, that it was in there.

[A]

It was in there and it continues, right. Like, you know, it's so wonderful. I mean, I think that's. Every time one of my friends, parents dies, I'm like, great, come on over to the club. Right? Because it's so great when they. When you start to understand that, you know, death has never been the end of your relationship with your parents. That's right.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And I know that her, her friends are still having relationships with her.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

My brother and sister's relationships with her are evolving. And now this little person has come along to start a whole new relationship with her. It's like.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You know, I, if death sort of, you know, whatever you believe kind of spiritually and, you know, my beliefs are limited. Whatever you believe, it's still never the end. Right. And so I, I mean, I think my hope is that I can model that for her. That, you know, as long as you sort of enjoy your head in your heart and the sort of space between people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, know, everything goes on forever.

[B]

Well, Rosie, thank you so much. I so appreciate spending time with you and I will be thinking about Tutu child and Wonderful.

[A]

Thank you so much. I will be out cultivating bees and butterflies. Well, I appreciate you so much, Dr. Slick.

[B]

Thank you. Appreciate you too, Rosie. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now is the perfect time. You can listen to Talk about Able completely ad free, plus you'll unlock exclusive content like even more helpful advice and tips on the challenges parents are facing. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or go to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app. You can also listen to and ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Talk about Able is produced by Lemonada Media in partnership with Montaj Health and their Ohana center for Child and Family Mental Health, and it's made possible through funding from the Montage Health Foundation. Together, we're committed to helping families talk about the issues that children, teens and young adults are facing today. We believe that when these conversations are happen at home, even about the most challenging subjects, children build the skills they need to flourish. Because when families are connected, the hard moments become more bearable, the good moments become even better, and it all becomes Talk about Able. The show is produced by Hannah Boomershein and James Barber. Our senior producer is Muna Daenish, mixing and sound design by James Barber. Kristin Lepore is our VP of color content development and Jackie Danziger is head of content. Maggie Crowshaw is our senior director of partnerships. Executive producers include myself, Stephanie Whittles Wax and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Special thanks to Kelsey Talley and Maya Smith. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next week.