Talking with elementary school-age children about AIDS and death: principles and guidelines for school nurses

Teaching school children about sensitive or controversial issues presents difficulties for classroom teachers as well as school nurses. At each developmental stage, there is appropriate information that can be absorbed by children that will help them in dealing with such things as death and AIDS. However, many children will have been involved at home with these events before they have come to understand them. Nurses and teachers have the task of imparting to young students what they know, while being sensitive to the probing and questioning that must precede a child's comprehension of unfortunate facts that still trouble adults.