explaining soul (Full Version)

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beefcake_sleuth -> explaining soul (4/21/2008 1:52:07 AM)

How would/have you gone about explaining what a soul is to a child. We are dealing with a dying relative and time is running short. I have a six year old who has a very very difficult time grasping abstract ideas. I am really at a loss as to how to explain both death but mainly what a soul is to him.

Any ideas how to approach this?



Szaftoo -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 10:07:56 AM)

Just curious, why would the idea of a "soul" come up with a six year old?

Any way, the soul of a person is their own unique affections, desires, emotions, reasoning, understanding, etc. It is what makes a person who they are. The body will die, the soul won't.



beefcake_sleuth -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 10:15:23 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Szaftoo

Just curious, why would the idea of a "soul" come up with a six year old?

Any way, the soul of a person is their own unique affections, desires, emotions, reasoning, understanding, etc. It is what makes a person who they are. The body will die, the soul won't.

I was thinking of how he might be confused by an adult saying the person is in heaven when he could clearly see the body right in front of him. That got me to wondering how do you even tell a small child what a soul is in a way that makes sense?

My daughter seemed to be able to grasp these ideas much sooner than my son. I am not going to go into all his issues here in this thread, I'd just prefer to leave it at already stated- he has more difficulty than most with grasping abstract ideas.



PrincessDonna -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 10:32:11 AM)

In the case of someone dying, you can explain that the body is kind of like a shell. It is the part that the soul (mind, will, and emotions) and spirit (the eternal part of us) live in. When the body or shell dies, which happens because sin and death were introduced by Adam and Eve's sin, the spirit goes to wherever it will spend eternity, and the soul is actually no longer needed because we don't have physical bodies that need us to think, make choices, or feel things.

Many people use the wrong term for soul or spirit. I think it's the actual spirit part you are talking about and that is the hardest part to explain, I agree. The spirit is the eternal part of us, the part of us that lives on after our body dies. We will also have new bodies in Heaven, but I don't think we have any idea what they will be like.

This is tough stuff for even adults to fully comprehend. It's okay to explain it the best you can and then remind him that there are things we just can't know until God says it is our time for the body and spirit to separate.



beefcake_sleuth -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 11:19:15 AM)

I like that idea...explaining the body as a shell. I know I have heard it described like that before but it didn't come to mind.

So you are saying that the term "soul" and "spirit" are not really interchangeable?



PrincessDonna -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 12:07:32 PM)

quote:

So you are saying that the term "soul" and "spirit" are not really interchangeable?


Correct. I've heard several teachings on the original wording and what each means. Before that, I always thought they meant the same thing too.



manda59 -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 2:28:34 PM)

We used a similar idea with our children - only we used the image of a "tent" instead of "shell".



pbaribeault -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 5:24:05 PM)

If he is concrete, you might do a demonstration...

The first one to my mind is to let a bottle of pop go flat.

Open it, listen to the hiss, tell him to watch for the puff and let him smell it as it first lets off. Tell him about the gas that is inside the drink, making it bubbly. Let him taste it and feel the bubbles. Then leave it to go flat, and have him taste it again. Emphasize how it looks the same but it's not - all the bubbles have gone out into the air.

You'll have to make the connection for him that when someone dies, only the body is left -- all the life, spirit, soul (whatever word you want will do at his age, but only use one - so that he doesn't get confused) the part of a person that feels, thinks, remembers stuff and everything... That part is invisible and it goes out of the body and meets God.

So the body gets buried (or cremated) because it's not too important any more, the real part of the person has left it.



nicole6598 -> RE: explaining soul (4/21/2008 6:04:42 PM)

pam you should be a teacher, I know you are a teacher as a mum, but you know what I mean, a teacher in a classroom, you have wonderful ideas that kids would learn from.



beefcake_sleuth -> RE: explaining soul (4/22/2008 12:46:41 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pbaribeault

If he is concrete, you might do a demonstration...

The first one to my mind is to let a bottle of pop go flat.

Open it, listen to the hiss, tell him to watch for the puff and let him smell it as it first lets off. Tell him about the gas that is inside the drink, making it bubbly. Let him taste it and feel the bubbles. Then leave it to go flat, and have him taste it again. Emphasize how it looks the same but it's not - all the bubbles have gone out into the air.

You'll have to make the connection for him that when someone dies, only the body is left -- all the life, spirit, soul (whatever word you want will do at his age, but only use one - so that he doesn't get confused) the part of a person that feels, thinks, remembers stuff and everything... That part is invisible and it goes out of the body and meets God.

So the body gets buried (or cremated) because it's not too important any more, the real part of the person has left it.

This is a really great idea! Thank you.



teaspoon61 -> RE: explaining soul (4/28/2008 6:55:20 PM)

I went through this when my mother died. My son was 4 years old when it happened and it was very hard to try to explain to him. This is what I did and I had heard it from someone else before.

Take a balloon and show it to him flat. Then blow it up. Explain to him that the balloon is like the body. It is there to contain the soul. The soul is in there but you can't see it. Just like you can't see the air that's in the balloon - - but you know it's in there.

Then tie the balloon to keep the air in. Show the balloon going from room to room, explaining that what's life is like. We use our bodies to travel from place to place. Our soul's inside us.

Then you will break the balloon. It's very important that he see you break the balloon. Explain to him that when we die, the soul leaves the body like the air left the balloon. We can't see the soul leave the body, just like we can't see the air leave the balloon. Then show the balloon, broken and how it can't hold air again.

This is like our bodies in death, it can't hold the soul again.

I hope this helps, it helped my son understand about the soul.



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