Family and siblings

• How do you talk to a child about death?

  The single most helpful thing when explaining death is clear, concrete language. Euphemisms — 'went to sleep', 'we lost him', 'went away' — create fear and confusion in young children, opening new anxieties about sleep, travel and separation. Understanding that death is irreversible usually settles between five and seven; before that a child may ask the same question repeatedly. Grief in children runs in waves rather than continuously: fast switches between crying and playing aren't callousness, they're how a child carries it.

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• How do you tell a child about divorce?

  What determines the effect of a divorce on a child is less the separation itself than the level of conflict afterwards and how predictable the child's care arrangements are. Three things are needed when you tell them: that the decision is final, that they are not responsible, and what will concretely change in daily life. Ideally both parents say it together, in one short and consistent account, with no detail and no blame. Afterwards a child may ask the same question for weeks — that isn't failing to understand, it's how they digest it.

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• How do you reduce sibling rivalry?

  Sibling rivalry isn't a character problem, it's the natural result of sharing resources: attention, time and space, with a rival, for the first time. The strongest lever isn't equality — trying to be exactly equal teaches children to keep watching the scales. What works is separation: regular, short, uninterrupted one-to-one time with each child, and a description that belongs to each of them alone. In a fight, keeping the outcome the same for both rather than acting as judge lowers the payoff of telling on each other.

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