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Children and Death
This is something that puzzled me last week.
My girlfriend's little niece is a very smart 2 year old girl (although I'm coming to the conclusion that 2 year old kids tend to be smart anyway), and both of them were walking along the road. Her niece then asked my girlfriend to pick her up, rather desperately. My girlfriend then asked her:
"What's wrong, are you afraid?"
"Amanda is afraid!"*
"Why?"
"Cars knock Amanda down! Amanda (is) afraid (of) Vroom vrooms!"
"Oh, come here, darling, don't worry, they're not gonna hit you: see, we're not on their way"
"AMANDA GONNA DIE!!!!"
Now, that's when my girlfriend looked at her kinda shocked, because she didn't really expect such a young child to know about death, let alone be afraid of it. I always thought that fear of death involved an understanding of the world a lot more elaborate than that of a small kid, but I was apparently wrong.
Does anyone know more about how kids cope with these existential dilemmas? I don't know if she's aware of the fact that she's eventually going to die one day, but is this a common fear among kids? I don't remember being afraid of death when I was that young. Well, I don't remember much of my life back then anyway, but... yeah, I'd like to know the opinion and experiences of those who happen to know children better than I do.
* Apparently, she has not yet understood how pronouns work, so she uses her own name and doesn't know the word "you" actually refers to "the person being spoken to" 
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