Dr. David Coleman

What happens to their soul, their spirit?

And so that allows you then to begin to introduce a narrative that might be associated with your own religion, if you have a particular faith that you follow, or it might be to do with your own sense of what happens to us so that death becomes not necessarily a scary thing, but just

another stage or another transition in terms of life that it is something of course that's going to happen very unlikely to happen for you know them as parents if they're in their whatever the 10 year old possibly in their 40s 30s 40s um you know so it's hopefully going to be you know a long while down the road yet for them

And so I think it's just about keeping that conversation open, acknowledging the fears, acknowledging that the fears are rational, but also then letting them know that death is not necessarily something that's terribly bad.

I mean, we just don't know.

And also then that the way most people cope with death is after they've pondered it, after they've thought about it,

then they just put it at the back of their mind because you can't really go through life living when you're thinking about dying and so uh you know most of us only really think about dying when it comes calling you know at our door because somebody close to us perhaps is unwell or sick or or maybe dying or somebody has died and and that brings it back for most of us and we get caught up again ourselves even in some of that existential bit of like oh my gosh you know this is what death is about and the loss and and so on but also the you know what then happens and

So I think it's fine for your 10 year old to be in the midst of that.

I think it's just about engaging with him, talking with him.

And it's something that he will work through, you know, with your support.

And then he'll come out the other side of it.

I'm joined now in studio by parenting expert, Dr. David Coleman.

Morning, David.

Thanks for coming in to us.

You do still have time to get your questions in for David.

You can WhatsApp 0870 32 32 32, text 51551 or email today dmc at rte.ie.

But lots of questions in already.

this one is about a young child and hand washing right so my little girl is three next month and has recently shown real discomfort and irritability around hand washing specifically drying them if there's any part of her hand that's still any bit wet or damp she gets very upset insists on drying them properly often insisting on getting toilet paper or kitchen roll as well as the hand towel my husband is worried this may be the start of some kind of toddler or general ocd could that be the case

And what should we do?

Okay, but just keep an eye on it.