How Children Grieve
It is believed that even infants grieve. If a person has been consistently present in an infant's life and then dies, the infant will feel a sense of loss.A young child often does not initially respond to hearing that someone has died. Parents often interpret this lack of response as an indication that the child has no initial reaction or visible grief.
It is important to remember that a young child's perception is oriented in the five basic senses and is concrete, short-range and based on what is felt in the moment.
Young children can have a difficult time comprehending the concept of death. A person is gone; then a person is there. When a person is gone and then still gone and then still gone, a child may grieve at each moment when he or she feels the person's "gone ness".
The child will miss specific elements about and/or concrete associations with the person: the sound of his/her voice, facial expressions, smell, activities experienced together.
On the other hand, a child may not grieve at all until the cumulative effect of the loss inspires a longing or aching protest within the child.
Young children also mourn the loss of secondary people in their lives such as other family members and persons with whom the child spends significant amounts of time.
Children Are Concrete In Their Thinking
Describe death concretely in order to lesson their confusion. Use the words "death" and "dying," not "gravely ill" or "passed away" or "left us." Answer their questions simply and honestly.
You do not have to add a lot of detail. When ready, children will ask if they want to know more. Try to discern if they are listening because they want to or for your benefit by watching their reactions.
Children Think from Specific to General
If someone dies in a hospital, children think that hospitals are for dying. If someone dies in his/her sleep, children are afraid to go to sleep. If one person dies, they fear someone else or everyone will die.
Children will learn to accommodate new truths on their own if they are allowed to express themselves and to try things out, such as going to sleep and waking up alive.
Children Are Repetitive in Their Grief
Children may ask questions repetitively. The answers often do not resolve their searching. The searching is part of their grief work.
Their questions are indicative of their feelings of confusion and uncertainty. Listen and support their searching. Answer repetitively. You may have to tell the story over and over and over again.
Children Are Physical in Their Grief
Grief is not only an emotional experience, but a physical experience as well for all ages and most especially for younger children. The older children are, the more capable they are of expressing themselves in words, but younger children simply are their feelings. What they do with their bodies speaks their feelings.
Movement and active play yield communication. Watch their body movements and expressions, and understand that their play could serve as their language of grief.
Reflect their play verbally and physically as a way of supporting their communication. For instance, you might say, "You are bouncing, bouncing, bouncing on those pillows; your face is red and you are yelling loudly." Verbally reflecting their play makes them feel that they are being heard and encourages them to continue to communicate.
Abstract Thinking
As children become older, they begin to grasp the concept of death. "Dead" takes on more meaning than just "gone." They begin to understand that the person will never come back.
Abstract thinking develops more in depth with the onset of adolescence. Sometimes a death will lead adolescents into philosophic pondering, sometimes appearing like depression, as they investigate the meaning of the event that has occurred. Questions such as "What is life?" "What is death?" "Who am I?" may arise.
Children Grieve Cyclically
Their grief work goes in cycles throughout their childhood and life. Each time they reach a new developmental level, they reintegrate the important events of their lives, using their newly acquired processes and skills.
For instance, a one-year old upon the death of her mother may become absorbed in the death again when her language skills develop and she/he is able to use words for the expression of her feelings. She/He may re-experience the grief again as she/he passes through different developmental stages (for example: as she/he passes into adolescence, she/he will start to use her/his newly acquired cognitive skills of abstract thinking).
Children Need Choices
Death is a disruption in children's lives that is quite frightening. Their lives will probably feel unstable, confusing and out of control. These feelings of confusion can be smoothed if children have some say in what they do or do not do to memorialize the person who died and to express their feelings about the death.
Whenever possible, children should be offered choices about going to the hospital, viewing the body, and attending the funeral. Children often appreciate being offered pictures and possessions of the deceased person as a way of supporting their grieving process. Allow them to have clothing or objects of the person, to play with toys, and to have pictures. Let them choose what they want and what they want to do with them.
Children may assume qualities of the dead person as a way of keeping a sense of that person alive. Mannerisms and symptoms of the deceased person may appear.
Children Grieve As A Part Of A Family
When a family member dies, it will affect the way the family functions as a whole. All the relationships within the family may shift, adjusting to the new family structure.
Children may mourn the person who died and the environment in the family that existed before the death. Children may grieve the changed behavior of family and friends.
It is helpful if each family member is encouraged to grieve in his/her own way, with support for individual differences. Family members should give others permission to witness their mourning. It is important not to shield children from emotions. Offering them the option to be alone or to be with others will facilitate their feelings of being included and give them permission to be with their feelings as well.
A Child's Feelings
Children's feelings are their allies. Feelings help children to pay attention to their loss. Through this attention comes their own understanding about the death they are grieving. Although young children do not understand the abstract concept of death, they should be allowed to express their feelings through behavior and by asking questions.
Children of all ages must work through their fearful feelings until they come to their own understanding. The process may be difficult for both parents and children as it may include nightmares, physical symptoms, regressions, and anti-social behavior. If children receive sufficient attention and nurturing in a relatively stable environment during this fearful time, they will recover a sense of a basic dependability of life.
Fear can appear differently in different children. Listen to a child's fears and validate them as difficult feelings to feel.
Some children act younger or regress. They want the reassurance, the care and attention that they received when they were younger.
On the other hand, some children become over-achievers in an attempt to contradict their own feelings of helplessness. They may attempt to do everything "right," even to the extent of parenting their parents.
Some children exhibit exaggerated displays of power to counteract their fears. This can take the form of super-hero manifestations or may look like what we would characterize as naughty behavior, acting out, anger and/or belligerence.
Some children may withdraw and become very quiet, frozen in fear.
Guilt
There are many kinds of guilt about a death, including (but not limited to):
Guilt from intentional action that may have caused a death.
Regret for actions (or lack of) that might have prevented a death.
An unrealistic sense of responsibility that protects us from the senselessness of the death.
Sometimes unrealistic guilt can ease the fear that children may feel when someone dies. Taking unrealistic responsibility for a death gives children a false reassurance that they can prevent unwanted events if they only try harder.
Over-protectiveness of children can also produce a child's guilt. For instance, as a natural protective mechanism, parents may not tell their children what is taking place. Children perceive the tension, sadness and anger and become frightened, sensing that something horrible is taking place but no one is talking to them about it.
All children attempt to make sense out of what is happening in their surroundings and do so by filling in the gaps with their own imagined explanations and/or assumptions, often with a sense of personal responsibility for what has taken place. As they mature, they begin to comprehend that life's events happen and that they are not solely responsible.
When children feel unrealistic guilt for a death, remind them of the facts of the situation. "It is not your fault. You are a child and could not have taken over the driving of the car to save Daddy. Daddy was an adult, a good driver, and even he could not do it. The other car was coming towards us too fast, and that is why it hit us and killed Daddy."
When children continue to feel unrealistic guilt, acknowledge their feelings and recognize them as difficult. Children may need to continue to feel guilty until they are ready to feel the more difficult feelings of vulnerability.
Anger
There are different kinds of anger expressed in grieving. There may be unresolved issues between a child and the person who died. There may be anger in a child as a protest against the fact of the death and the lack of dependability of life.
Anger can also be an antidote to fear, which could be manifested in an outward display of personal power. A child may become rebellious or resistant to counteract the vulnerability of feeling fear and sorrow.
Sorrow
Feelings of sadness may indicate a child's readiness to accept the truth of the loss.
Sorrow can be an expression of a child's feelings of vulnerability as he or she continues to live without the person who died.
Children may grieve a loss of security. Loving arms around a child who cries with sorrow can offer safety and acceptance in a world that includes the dying of those we love.
Acceptance
We do not "get over" an important death in our lives. We learn to live with it, accept it, and go on with our lives to find and create joy in living. Gentle acknowledgment of those who have died gives depth to our picture of life.
Adapted with permission from the Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon.