Child scolds mother for sugar-coating his mortality

5 year-old George Dixon has reprimanded his mother for talking complete and utter nonsense about death. After watching her squirm for no more than 10 minutes, he felt compelled to interrupt and ask when Dad was coming home. Through gritted teeth he listened as she patronisingly used blatant misrepresentations to persuade him of his own immortality.

George addressed his concerns to Our Daily Bread, "Does she still think I'm 4 years old or something? I'm 6 next week for christ's sake. She was such a clumsy tooth fairy, but I played along to keep things simple. And now she has the audacity to say that one day I'll see Grandad again. Where is her sense of duty towards truth? Can I get some Ribena now please?"

Parents have traditionally found it difficult to inform children that death is the end and not a transition. The unpalatable fact that their corpses are going to rot has been skirted, and further clouded by the notion of a soul. To assist parents in speaking to their young ones, psychotherapists have suggested using the analogy that people are like balloons. 

Dr Patricia Jacobson of the Private Therapy clinic clarified, "As a person begins to age they become more wrinkled and have less energy. A slow death, due to Alzheimers for example, is the balloon slowly deflating. Whereas the ballon bursting can be likened to chronic organ malfunction such as a heart attack or the rupture of a brain aneurysm."

She concluded, "These kinds of psychological strategies help children to realise that death signifies nothing but meaningless oblivion - in an empty, puckered skin."