On the big questions I think it's right to be honest (definitely don't lie), but there's also a need to tailor what you say and how you say it to the state of m

On the big questions I think it's right to be honest (definitely don't lie), but there's also a need to tailor what you say and how you say it to the state of mind of the child asking it. Where there's a question you need to understand it before you can answer it. That's true for all teaching, of course. I haven't always been successful at that with my own children, but one time I think I did get it right was talking to my first child about death at age 5. We'd looked at an insect larva under a microscope and it stopped moving, so we talked about how bodies can break permanently. He wasn't squeamish or upset when he asked, in relation to this happening to people, "what happens to you when you die?" I had already explained that (in my view - I've always made it clear there are others) the "you" that is thinking ceases to exist. The question arose because he was struggling with the concept of himself not existing, which isn't an easy one. So we talked a bit about the time before he was born. He had no memory of it as he didn't exist then, but the world did and things were happening nonetheless. That satisfied him for the time being. Later he asked about the larva and pointed out that it was still there, just not moving. I explained that its body was still there but it was no longer in the right shape to be that particular bug, and it never would be again. I illustrated that by arranging some objects in a circle on the table and saying "there's a circle on the table now, isn't there?" And then rearranging the objects randomly and saying "now the circle is gone, but the things the circle was made of are still there." Again, that satisfied him and in the years since he appears to have developed a healthy attitude to death. It's probably helped that I've always pointed out that (again, the way I see it) the business with the objects and the circle is profoundly mysterious. We can play around with things on a table and make it seem banal because it is an everyday reality, but we don't have a satisfying answer to "what that circle was" as distinct from the objects that made it up. We have a lot of knowledge that can help illuminate the question and we might (or might not) be making some progress on actually answering it, but we certainly don't have all the answers and it's an open question whether we ever will. The matter-of-factness of the world doesn't mean it's obvious, understood or even necessarily understandable, or that things like people, thoughts, life and emotions aren't first class aspects of it. Sorry, that derailed into pseudophilosophical rambling. Point is it's important to try and understand where their questions are coming from.