Has it occurred to anyone connected with this family to ask WHY the child is being so affected by the death of an imaginary character? By definition, the imagination can revive or re-create anything it wants to; so why is this hitting the little boy so hard? It sounds as though - however fictional the deceased may be - the grieving process is real and should be handled accordingly.

And: Is everyone 100% sure there is no such person (I'm assuming the school has enough sense to look in their files for a surname other than "the-diabetic-albino")? Eight-year-olds don't always have the language to articulate what they mean, particularly if there are emotions complicating it. Could this be a reaction to some external real event which has become conflated in the boy's mind with school, where there are lots of kids? Some of my small students (harp) make the most astonishing word-substitutions, and those are on neutral topics.

This scenario just sounds serious, at least from the little I've read, though it probably comes across quite differently when standing around the coffee machine. But - I have to ask - is he still feeling upset and (more worryingly) guilty?