Children can have suicidal thoughts and may act on them, says a certified suicide prevention trainer who will present a workshop Saturday dealing with how to recognize warning signs and talk to children about death and suicide.
The youngest person on record to die by suicide was just four-years-old, said Shawna Percy, founder and trainer for Life Voice Canada, a Guelph business which seeks to build suicide-safer communities through workshops.
“Would that four-year-old have understood the permanency of death? Probably not,” said Percy.
The workshops Life Voice provides can be likened to First Aid for people who may be suicidal, said Percy.
“Suicide comes down to often a person being in pain, experiencing some kind of loss and feeling like they don’t have enough healthy control and power over their lives. All too often people feel that they are faced with two options, which is living — which looks impossible right now — or dying because they can’t imagine living,” said Percy.
Sometimes people who have suicidal thoughts just need someone to listen, said Percy, but many people don’t know how to do that effectively.
Percy will present a workshop called ASK, which stands for Assessing for Suicide in Kids on Saturday, which happens to fall on International Survivor of Suicide Loss Day.
The full-day ASK workshop, which is being offered at 10C, is intended for people who work with children age five to 14.
“I would love for elementary school teachers and middle school teachers to be there, foster parents, child and youth workers, mental health counsellors that are working with kids, family counsellors, as well as parents,” said Percy.
When speaking to kids about suicide, one must spend extra time to determine what those children already understand about death and dying, said Percy.
“I think there is a lot of fear that if we talk to kids about suicide, we are going to put that idea into their minds,” said Percy.
That fear is unfounded, she said.
Percy learned this first hand when dealing with the death by suicide of her first husband, one day before their daughter’s second birthday.
“I realized when adults would hear me say the word dead to my child, they would be taken aback, almost like they were saying ‘what are you doing? You’re going to harm your child,’" said Percy.
Being vague about death and suicide may be a coping mechanism for adults, said Percy, but may not be helpful when dealing with children who may not understand the meaning behind those words and can even take them literally.
Percy recounted a situation when her daughter overheard her say she ‘lost her husband’.
“This one day when I picked her up from daycare the child care provider said to me ‘your daughter is upstairs trying to find her dad’, because when you lose something — you can find it,” said Percy.
Being vague with children about death can even be harmful, she said.
“By only saying, for example, that grandma went to heaven and leaving it there — if the child doesn’t understand the permanancy of death, they might suicide to go visit grandma in heaven without understanding they can’t come back the next day,” said Percy.
Although she suggests answering questions by kids in a frank manner, Percy says to stop short of explaining the means by which people take their own lives.
“We don’t want to force information on them that they are not ready for, but kids tend to be curious and if they ask us we should be answering the questions they are asking us — with the exception of means,” she said
Young children can sometimes say things like ‘I want to die’ when dealing with their feelings and Percy said that can be a time to have a serious discussion with them in what may be a non-crisis situation.
“When comments like that come up they are a great opportunity for us to make the conversation around suicide okay and to have a conversation around it’s not appropriate to use that kind of language when you’re not thinking about actually dying, because when you say that I’m going to be really concerned about you and I want to make sure you’re safe. But I also want you to know that if you do mean that and you are thinking about that, then I absolutely want you to come and talk to me about that,” said Percy.
