Although little comfort to those who
have experienced the loss, the loss of a child's life is less common
than many years ago. Approximately 2 1/2 million Americans die every
year, including 12,000 adolescents, roughly 250 per state in one year.
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Five
Steps to Help Kids Grieve
1. Be sure they
know about the loss.
2. Talk about the
child who has passed. The more stories the
better. Keep in mind that the more memories of
the child are recounted, the better chance grief
has a chance to progress and succeed.
3. Talk about
death. Again, in an age appropriate manner.
Offer examples of death that are not upsetting
or scary, like flowers coming and going, the
changes of the seasons, for example. Put death
into context as both a very natural part of
life, and when it comes to those we love, a very
painful part of life.
4. Respect your
child's grief. It will be different than yours.
It will be different day to day. As long as you
feel that feelings about the loss are not
causing harm to your child, let the grief find
its own resolution. Never make someone feel
their grief is any less real or valuable if not
sad.
5. Obtain help
when needed. If your child seems to have
difficulty progressing over time towards
recovery from their grief, or if their feelings
seem harmful to them, or even if the feelings
just appear too painful or upsetting, don't
hesitate to ask for help. Family members and
pediatricians will likely know who can be good
at helping.
At times such as
these, when much of our community grieves at
senseless loss, it is good that we give a
moment's thought to how to help our children
with their grief.
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The loss of someone we care for touches
on the fundamental fact that we are a product of our connections, our
relationships. Alter those connections strongly enough, and a grief
reaction will have to take place, in anyone. The definition of grief is
a set of responses - including emotional but also thought, behavioral,
medical, and social - to a significant loss. Grief is both manifestation
of the mind responding to loss and a goal --allowing us to mark how much
we care and at the same time find some path toward continuing to live,
remember who is no longer here, and connect to those still around us.
The strong reaction we all have to death
is part of who we are as people. It reflects a very deep truth that each
of us are profoundly connected to many others. To some degree, not one
of us is truly an individual, but rather each of us are part of a web of
relationships that to a very large extent define who we are. It is
through our connections with others that any sense of self actually
emerges. And so, when someone we love or care for dies, or when we hear
of such a loss, we are structurally built to respond. Something that
defines who we are has changed, and has been lost, and we cannot help
but respond. Inside each of us, there is a process that gets activated
at such times of loss, called grief.
Grief is not defined by any one action,
such as crying; or any one mood, such as sadness. Some people grieve
very deeply without crying or even feeling sad. Of course, many people
do cry and feel very sad when grieving, but that is not the definition
of grief.
The definition of grief is a set of
responses - including emotional but also thought, behavioral, medical,
and social - to a significant loss. Grief is a manifestation and a goal.
The loss of a person causes a physical reaction in the mind, one that
can now be visualized with brain imaging, and grief is the manifestation
of those changes. One can think of the physical changes in the brain
when it experiences a loss as largely invisible to anyone, but grief is
the sign that changes in the brain are occurring. The goal of grief is
closely connected to its physical reality, for grief is what allows us
to mark how much we care and at the same time find some path towards
continuing to live, remember who is no longer here, and connect to those
still around us.
Already, we note several features of
grief that are universal to all people, and very helpful to keep in mind
if you trying to understand your own or your child's grieving:
Grief is vital and inherent to being
human. As such it is universal to all who touch death.
Grief serves a purpose as noted above.
And, everyone has a very different set of
grief responses, and these responses vary not only from person to
person, but from day to day. Further, every loss generates a different
set of grief reactions in the same person.
How do these properties of grief help us
help our children grieve?
First of all, it is important not to
protect your child from grief. As painful as it can be, grief is
helpful, and more importantly, it is always more sad and hurtful to
block someone's grieving. If a sad loss occurs, it is critically
important that those who have lost someone they care for know about it.
There is a reflex we all have as parents to shield our children from
hurtful feelings. Grief is not one that should be shielded. Keep in mind
that losses have a very real dimension to them. If someone passes, that
fact always is found out, and once someone knows of their loss, even if
they are a child, they will grieve, and will need to. Very importantly,
if a loss occurs, no matter how awful the circumstances, not telling the
story, in an age appropriate manner, leaves the mind open to fill in the
blanks, and it turns out our fantasies are always worse than the facts.
One cannot emphasize too much just how
variable grief can be. We tend to think healthy grieving requires
sadness and crying. And, for many people, that is how they grieve. But
there are many people who actually feel no sadness and do not cry, for
long periods, or at all, and yet they are grieving as deeply as anyone
else. Grief is the mind adjusting to deep loss, and so it is a
successful adjustment that is the goal, not how you get there. How one
gets there is part of the very complicated makeup of each person.
A common path all people take to manage
the pain of their loss is the explanation. There is essentially nothing
in our lives of any great importance that we don't have an explanation
for. There is always a story behind how parents met, or how we chose our
career. If it's important, our mind demands a story to explain it. This
turns out to be a real problem for grieving, for death can often,
especially in childhood, be accidental, with no explanation. In the
United States fully two-thirds of all deaths in childhood, are from
accidents, because there are so few illnesses that take the lives of
children anymore. Accidents are just that, rare, inexplicable products
of millions of coincidences, that have no explanation, truly. But the
mind bristles at the missing explanation and usually forces one on
itself. This is where guilt holds sway. It turns out to be more painful
to have no explanation than to make one up, even if the made up
explanation simply blames oneself. Guilt is less painful than no
explanation.
An important element of grief is to
weaken made up explanations that hurt ourselves. A final property of
grief to keep in mind is that has nothing to do with forgetting.
Forgetting is not grief, and grief is not forgetting. Just the opposite,
grief is what our minds do to allow us to bear remembering. Many people
assume that since grief can be full of pain, the best plan is to forget.
But grief cannot conclude until it finds the path to living while
remembering. Remember, grief is what happens when the connections to
those we love are disrupted, grief is how the mind mends those torn
connections, keeping the connections in a world in which the child who
has died will no longer be there. Since grief is all about finding ways
to redefine those connections to the person who has died to keep us
connected even after a death, forgetting will stall and delay grief, not
relieve it.
Now, if grief is a universal part of
being human, and has certain properties common in all who grieve, how do
these aspects of grief help a parent help their child? Below are listed
approaches and activities that help, be sure to adapt them to your
child's age. For young children, a good rule of thumb is to limit
discussion and activities to concepts you think your child is able to
ask about. With that in mind, we have found these approaches take all
the realities of grief into account and do help your child(ren):
Written by Susan Glaser, a
national early childhood consultant and Dr. Arthur Lavin a pediatrician
at Advanced Pediatrics in Beachwood, Ohio. They are the authors of
Who's the Boss? Moving Families from Conflict to Collaboration.
Reprinted from the Cleveland Jewish News and posted 01-09-2012 on
kidsgrowth.com
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