I’m very uncomfortable with my daughter’s relationship with death.
First off, Augustine knows real death.
2019 will probably always be remembered by us as the ‘Year of Dying’. First my Grandmother died December 2018 and then our dog Bolt passed in May. Two deaths in six moths is a lot, and with nearly a year perspective, it’s hard to tell which hurt the most. On the scale of sadness, they were both Greek Tragedies.
Augustine was as close to each passing as any of us at the end. We didn’t try and shield her from either experience, nor do I think we really could have.
- As for my Grandmother, we had all visited her just about a month before she passed. When she did die, Jade and I openly cried in front of Augustine and talked about/explained what death was in detail. Then, about a week later, we all went to the funeral, and my wife and I answered all Augustine’s questions as honestly as we could.
- With Bolt, his death was a shock. Out of nowhere, we had to put him down. When we did, all three of us were petting him, and…well… if you’ve never put a dog down – then you don’t know how you literally watch the life depart from their eyes.
In addition to not pulling the sting out of the concept of dying, we had spent the months leading up to my Grandmother’s death changing our family’s vocabulary. Knowing that my Grandmother had a terminal diagnosis, gave us time to stop using words like ‘death’ and ‘dead’ broadly. It took some effort, but together Jade and I changed common shorthands such as ‘my phone is dead’ to something closer to the truth, like ‘my phone is out of charge’. I for one thought this was a really big step that would help Augustine better define permanent death, and maybe it did.
At any rate, now, the realities of life and death are about as clear to Augustine as I think they can be to any first world child.
Cut to October of this year. I bought a collection of Shakespearean stories ‘for kids’. The included plays were Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer, Twelfth Night, Tempest, MacBeth, and Hamlet.
Did you know literally everyone dies in Shakespeare…many, many by killing themselves?
When I opened the collection for the first time, I figured about half of it was a wash; that Augustine wouldn’t be interested in all of the stories, especially the more cerebral ones. Turns out I was right and wrong. Half the book has been pretty much abandoned, but not the half I had assumed.
Instead of mainly just reading Twelfth Night and Midsummer, Augustine got hooked on Romeo and Juliet. I mean, really fascinated, to the extent that she can recite all the plot points (even the deep cuts – like Romeo killing Paris, which, you know, even Baz Luhrmann ignored).
Looking back, I don’t know what I was expecting – of course Augustine would like the love story. I just thought a kids version would somehow mask all the violence, but most often it keeps the death and leaves out the beauty. For instance, Mercutio’s death is all ‘the murder itself’ – no beautiful, eloquent dying monologue – no ‘plauging’ – just a knife to the chest followed by another knife in Tybalt’s chest.
Then of course, there’s the unavoidable suicide.
In our dozens or so readings, I’ve never really gotten comfortable going through the five fully-illustrated pages of a double suicide with my four year old. In the back of my mind, every time we get close to finishing the play, I think, ‘we’re really gonna have to watch her coping mechanisms when she starts dating‘. (Like for real.)
If Augustine’s interest in Shakespeare had stoped with Juliet, we’d be better off….but it didn’t. She flirted for a bit with Hamlet (which ‘thank god’ glossed over Augustine’s favorite character Ophelia’s suicide – glossed over enough actually that I was able to turn her ‘disappearance’ into an opportunity for me to extoll the virtues of swim lessons). But ultimately, Augustine settled on MacBeth.
MacBeth.
I really think only Othello would raise more complicated questions from a preschooler.
Honestly, I lack the language to properly condemn the large swath of murder and death in the Scottish Play. When I try and explain the immorality of Duncan’s murder, I end up just adding a lot of “very’s” in front of ‘bad’. Going further would mean I’d have to explain the root of murder, which is hard if not impossible to break down to a 4 year old level.
I mean, how does one explain the concept of murder to a kid?
Murder is an extension of anger, sure. So I could say it’s about anger, and Augustine might understand the words but would miss the message because a preschool definition of anger is light years away from ‘murder angry’. And, worse maybe, my daughter doesn’t know that there are different angry’s or that what she’s experiencing that we call anger really isn’t anywhere near the depths what adults call anger.
So if I just say, ‘MacBeth’s mad and angry so he killed him’ – Augustine can say ‘I was mad and angry when Sasha wanted to play Superheroes and I wanted to play Kitty’. Or, if I say, ‘MacBeth wanted what Duncan had’ – Augustine can say ‘I want the kitty that Zora has.’
In both these instances, Augustine can deftly equate herself to one of Shakespeare’s most prolific killers.
What I can’t seem to say is the truth “look the world and the people in it are way more messed up than you can comprehend right now so let’s just turn the page”.
So…I’m stuck with ‘murder is bad’, ‘we don’t play with knives or swords’, ‘we don’t hurt other people’, and doubled down on ignoring the grey area surrounding MacDuff’s justified murder of MacBeth. So, in Augustine’s understanding of MacBeth – everyone is bad, except, maybe the witches and Lady MacBeth.
I was fine with that. It seemed like a safe place to leave things.
So, we put that book down and picked up the companion book I’d bought at the same time – the timeless and wholesome Christian Bible.
Nope.
The Usborn Kid’s Bibles make Shakespeare look like ‘Goodnight Moon’.
Straight murder is complicated, but not completely without preexisting societal examples (ie : Bambi’s mom is killed) Genocide though – genocide is an all new fresh concept for most preschoolers. Try explaining ‘murdering all the first born sons’ or ‘Sampson crushing everyone in the temple’. Or, justifying why people love the main character – God – but he drowns them all.
I’ll pass...
We rethought our strategy for moving Augustine into more adult books, and bought more innocuous adaptations – Little Women, Secret Garden. No one dies (yeah, our Little Women adaptation skips the heartache). More importantly, or most importantly, no one is murdered.
I thought we’d course corrected, but, actually, we were already sailing over the reef and entering new territory.
Cut to the last few weeks.
Playtime has changed. Jail is a less popular place to put bad guys now. More often superheroes have to ‘die them‘ (Augustine’s words for ‘kill them’). That’s right. it’s straight death by cop in our house.
I don’t know where this current Homegrown Superhero Murder Spree came from or why it’s started now, but it would be accurate to say that I’m uncomfortable with it. Mainly because I think I can trace back its roots: our family’s recent-real experience with death & our foray into murder literature. Sure, she’s probably getting this whole idea of ‘die-ing’ bad guys from a friend at school, but I’m betting that the friend’s relationship with death is a bit more Disney than Augustine’s – which makes me worried that Augustine is connecting dots between life-literature-and-playtime that may not be the most wholesome.
As with all questionable changes in our daughter’s choice of words and actions, we’re mostly concerned not by what we’re seeing but by where it might lead. So, is this new playground ‘die-ing’ the result of Shakespeare and if so, where could that lead next?
I could tell that my wife and I were on the same page when we were walking down the street the other day and Augustine asked out of the blue ‘How did Lady MacBeth die?’ (Our kid’s version of MacBeth totally skips over Lady MacBeth’s breakdown. She’s just mentioned as ‘dead’). Together, Jade and I danced around the word ‘suicide’, saying that she hurt herself (probably on accident) and leaned heavily on ‘but we don’t play like that’ and ‘that’s why we don’t play with knives’.
Augustine’s Response :: “yeah, I don’t play with real knives, but I can play MacBeth with my fake knives…the ones in my kitchen”
WTF!?!?!
So, we’re currently reading Dr. Seuss and learning to cook with spoons and forks.
But for real, I know that playing with fingers-for-guns and ‘killing / die-ing’ people is part of growing up – at least that’s how I played superheroes. Still, I worry about what Augustine is interpreting from everything around her. I want her to have the best skill set to handle her emotions, not know that suicide is a thing people do when they’re in love.
Really though, love would be an upswing. Just the other day, Augustine clarified her own folk-hero-of-choice by saying she wants to learn to act so she can be Lady MacBeth.
WTF!!!!!