Grief in Children
To this day, I still dislike being inside of a hospital. I was just short of five years old when my mother died of cancer. Common wisdom at the time held the notion that the less was said, the less negative impact the death of the loved one would have on the child: don’t talk about death, don’t discuss feelings and don’t ask too many questions. I got the message loud and clear. Bereavement, particularly for children, can be an exceptionally alienating time where feelings of abandonment and bewilderment run rampant in a child’s spirit and mind.
Perhaps my family subscribed to the myth that children don’t grieve. This painful, first-hand experience prompted me to eventually research more effective means of dealing with this far-reaching, childhood trauma. I also wanted to look more closely at how children mourn. In The Bright Futures Resource Guide, it notes, “While all children and adolescents yearn for lost loved ones, the way they mourn reflects their developmental level and continues to evolve as they re-experience the loss at different developmental points throughout life.” (Jellinek, Patel and Froehle eds. 2002 p. 283).
Mourning is a process of reconciliation. Children, similarly to adults, relive their symptoms of sadness, anger, guilt, sleep disturbances and anxiety for months or years afterwards. However, in contrast, Kubler- Ross (1983) describes the guilt and anxiety stemming from the child’s feeling that somehow they were responsible for the loved one’s death perhaps by having ‘bad’ thoughts about them (Willis, 2002).
There are four main differences described by Willis (2002) between how children and adults differ in their perception of death. A young child lacks the concepts of:
a) the irreversible nature of death
b) the finality
c) the inevitability, and,
d) the causality of death (p. 221).
Willis (2002) suggests that children never be told that ‘God or the angels’ needed the deceased, particularly between the ages of 5 and 6. “Children this age understand ‘need’ only as it relates to them self and their own comfort. Therefore a child might mistakenly blame God for taking away someone the child needed (p.223). Ironically, that was one line of comfort I was handed at the time! Children require concrete terminology in discussions of death as euphemisms such as “passed on” hold little meaning for them.
Another consideration for helping a grieving child could be in the framework of a grief support group with Depression Counsellors Vancouver. A group process can facilitate a firmer grasp on the above concepts, where perhaps, a grieving parent, over-taken with their own feelings of loss, may fall short. Being part of a group would be an essential component in promoting a sense of inter-connectedness, validation and peer support.
Quite possibly, talking about death in a group setting may ease a child’s sense of isolation and provide comfort for their loss by creating a means for empathetic feelings for others. Creative options such as painting, writing, dancing and music are just as effective and quite possibly a more familiar way of contending with the mix of emotions that come with experiencing death firsthand (Fritz, 2008), particularly if words fail them.
Further reading: A link to 10 books to further help children reconcile to loss of a loved one:
References
Jellinek, M., Patel, B.P., & Froehle M.C. Editors (2002). Mood Disorders: Depressive and Bipolar Disorders: Special Topic Grief and Bereavement in Children. Bright Futures Resources -Tools for Professional and Families . Retrieved from http://www.beacon.org
Fritz, K, Ed. (2008). Helping a child or adolescent deal with death (cover story). Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior, 24, 1-2.
Willis, C.A., (2002). The grieving process in children: strategies for understanding, educating and reconciling children's perceptions of death. Early Childhood Education Journal, 29(4), 221-227.
