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Parents and guardians of grieving children often wonder how best to help the young people in their care. Children experience many of the same feelings that adults do when someone close to them dies, but their grief process differs from an adult’s in several important ways.
The death of a family member or close friend can present some of the most difficult challenges a family can face. Loss is painful, and as parents, we strive to protect our children from such painful experiences. But when someone important in a child’s life has died, children and teens need the support, assistance, and honesty of adults.
They deserve the assistance of supportive adults to help them manage their feelings. The following suggestions are offered to assist you in the task of helping your child or teen to mourn in a healthy way and continue life with hope and confidence. Remember that your children, especially young children, will look to you for your reactions and responses and emulate them. Don’t forget to care for yourself and reach out for the help that you need, also. You might consider attending a parent support group at Ele’s Place while your child is at programming, seeking out individual counseling, or perhaps implementing some of your own unique coping mechanisms. When you are cared for, you can best care for your child.
As much as we would like to protect children from death and loss, many children will experience some type of significant loss. Parents can help prepare children for the inevitable losses in their life by taking advantage of the “teachable moments” that occur when children learn of a death of someone outside of their immediate family. They can then apply that information that they learn in a more abstract way from a more distant death to a significant loss as they process the death of a person important to them.
The following guidelines may help you to provide the information, coping skills and reassurance your children need.
For more information, please see our Resources page or call your local Ele’s Place branch.
Grief does not follow a predictable pattern. A child’s reaction to a death will vary depending on his or her age, relationship to the person who died, cause of death, other losses the child has experienced,current stresses in his or her life, coping skills, and other influences. Some children may show reactions immediately, while for others reactions may surface over time, sometimes several months or even years after the death. Like adults, unexpected triggers can arise for children that remind them of their person who died, and younger children may even struggle to define how or why they are feeling what they are experiencing. Children may also experience renewed grief over a past death as they grow up; they revisit their grief with a new understanding of its impact on their lives.
At Ele’s Place, children are given a vocabulary to express their emotions, the opportunity to share their stories and the story of the person important to them who died, and peers who quickly become friends as they learn to process death and their own reactions to it.
Similarly, parents and guardians have the chance to interface with others who care for bereaved children and share their own stories and experiences as they make their way through the various emotions, struggles, and triumphs that death has raised for them.
Support groups can be helpful for children and teens experiencing both normal and complicated grief. Peer support groups decrease isolation, promote healthy coping skills, provide a safe place to express feelings and share memories, and populate children’s vocabulary with concrete examples of ways in which they can express their grief. Ele’s Place is also unique in that it provides a space for silence as well. Children and their families are never pressured to share beyond their comfort zone and group facilitators are trained to ensure that participants feel valued, safe, and empowered to tell their story and the story of the person who died.
At Ele’s Place, children are given a vocabulary to express their emotions, the opportunity to share their stories and the story of the person important to them who died, and peers who quickly become friends as they learn to process death and their own reactions to it. When a violent death occurs, such as a suicide or homicide, family members often need additional support because of the complicated issues involved.
Similarly, parents and guardians have the chance to interface with others who care for bereaved children and share their own stories and experiences as they make their way through the various emotions, struggles, and triumphs that death has raised for them.
Ele’s Place not only provides insight into this process for the adults in the child’s life, but also offers structured adult groups concurrent with our children’s programming to not only work through their own grieving process, but also affords those parents and guardians a forum in which to discuss the variety of challenges presented to those caring for a grieving child.
Yes! Parents and guardians have the chance to interface with others who care for bereaved children and share their own stories and experiences as they make their way through the various emotions, struggles, and triumphs that death has raised for them.
Ele’s Place not only provides insight into this process for the adults in the child’s life, but also offers structured adult groups concurrent with our children’s programming to not only work through their own grieving process, but also affords those parents and guardians a forum in which to discuss the variety of challenges presented to those caring for a grieving child.
When children watch their friends going through the emotions that arise after death, they are naturally going to be curious, but they may also choose to maintain a distance between themselves and that friend. Because death is a relative unknown for most children, they are unlikely to know how best to approach their friend who has experienced a death (and not likely at all to know that most adults suffer this hesitancy as well). Grief does not follow a predictable pattern. A child’s reaction to a death will vary depending on his or her age, relationship to the person who died, cause of death, other losses the child has experienced,current stresses in his or her life, coping skills, and other influences.
The following tips may be helpful to share with caregivers of children a grieving child spends time with. Open communication with members of a child’s “village” can help keep responses to the child’s reactions to/about the death and their feelings consistent, while also maintaining the safety and security of the people they care about around them.
The below information highlights some of the ways in which children experience loss and grief and can help adults to understand and better support them.
