Helping children cope with grief

While concealing deep emotional pain, fear and loss of concentration, children are in the pressure cooker of expectations to grow emotionally and academically. They say that seeing friends with parents and parent/child school activities are daily reminders of their own loss.
Children express grief in a different way to that of adults. They tend to move in and out of intense feelings, rather than sustaining high levels of one emotion for long periods of time. When adults see a grieving child playing or laughing, they may mistakenly believe that the child is “over it”. This perception may influence how much grief support a child receives. There are generally three stages that children go through as they grieve, which are disorganisation, transition and reorganisation.
Disorganisation
The initial expressions of grief in children range from regression, temper tantrums, and exaggerated fears in younger children to physical symptoms, lack of concentration, and mood swings in older children. The disorganisation of early grief is a true crisis for children, but parents and loved ones can help the child through this stage.
Transition
Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and despair follow the stress and chaotic behaviors of the disorganisation stage. Many children will exhibit true depression. More common are symptoms of withdrawal, aggression, and giving up in school.
Reorganisation
When painful feelings are expressed, their emotional energy wanes, and detachment becomes possible. During this stage, children have more energy and motivation for moving forward to a positive resolution of their grief.
Children’s common concerns
A major worry for children may be who will look after them if one or both of their parents were to die. How would their basic needs, such as food, shelter and clothing, be met? In trying to reassure them, we can help them know that we hope we’ll be living as long as they need us and that most people live for a long, long time. If children are asking for more than that, we remind them of the many people who love them and who help look after them right now, aunts, uncles and family friends.
They may even like to know that, in the event of our death, we’ve made arrangements for their continuing care through a will and insurance. Talking about a death that is not close is one of the best chances we have to let our children tell us about their fears. That is why talking about  the death of a plant; a fish or a pet is such an important way to lay the groundwork for talking about a more painful death when it occurs.
Value of play
Children’s concerns only reach us through conversation. Sometimes they come less directly — through play. Play is serious business for children and the fundamental way for them to work on their feelings. Many parents are surprised to find children running out to play as usual, but that’s common because most children find it hard to tolerate heavy sadness, or even being around people who are grieving hard and long. In fact, that is an important reason for letting them know that sadness is not forever and that, little by little, the sadness will go away. Playing with a puppet might be an outlet for some children to express a wide range of feelings. We need to support this kind of play without interfering with it. Often, our most appropriate role is that of the quiet observer, nearby and available for conversation if the play leads naturally to talk.
Crying to express feelings
Children mourn. They feel sadness just as we do, and we all need to express that sadness in a way that is natural for us.
Crying is one way. Many adults feel they shouldn’t cry in front of their children, but if we try to hide our overwhelming sadness, children may wonder if we are really sad or not — and whether it is alright for them to be. If crying is not comfortable for us, then we need to find other ways. Grieving together gives us the chance to offer each other comfort. “We both feel sad, don’t we?”
Managing the guilty feeling
Children can also feel guilty. They may believe, “If only I had behaved better, she wouldn’t have died.” Or “I gave him the cold that started him getting sicker.”
At some age, children do tend to think that their thoughts and wishes have magical powers — that wishing someone dead could cause that person to die. Guilt can also come from specific regrets for things we said or did, or for things we didn’t say or do. Children are no different, and we help each other when we talk about these feelings together.
A teenager dealing with her mother’s death once asked a social worker; “Did she know I loved her? What about the times I said, “I hate you?” She needed to hear, as well as we all do, that we often express anger at people we love the most, that loving people understand that and forgive us. We need to be equally as forgiving of ourselves.
The process of grieving takes a long time. It is not unusual for a child to grieve for two or three months.
Holidays or special places or traditional events may evoke old feelings and may lead to yet another round of questions, and to still more discussion. These are times for reworking those feelings and for finding fuller understandings.
Though the sadness, thankfully, lessens, the process really continues all our lives. So, there are no books that will do it for us, and there are no magic “right” words to say. It is the trying, the sharing, and the caring — the wanting to help and the willingness to listen — that says, “I care about you.”
When we know that we do care about each other, then together we can talk about even the most difficult things and cope with even the most difficult times.
The final consideration in helping children live through grief is the developmental stage of the child. It’s important to note that a grieving child’s developmental stage may lag behind his chronological age.
The decisions are not always easy, and in addition to considering what may be best for our children, we need to stay responsive to what is best for us. When we are under the stress of bereavement, we may feel overtaxed by the constant need to cope with our young children’s questions and fears and upsets, not to mention the demands of their daily routines. If a child’s parent or other close relative died, invite him or her to participate in the service.
Some children like to write and/or read a poem or story about the loved one. Others choose to sing a song or pray. Still others choose to stay in the background. Prepare your child for what will be experienced. Will there be a body viewing? Will there be highly expressive people at the service? Talk with your child about what to expect. If there is a body to view, explain that their loved one is not hurting, hungry or cold.
If your family chose cremation, assure the child that the loved one experienced no pain during cremation. If your child chooses, allow him or her to see and touch the ashes. Generally, children appreciate being included and being given the opportunity to make their own decisions about participation in services.
– Philip Mataranyika is the CEO of Nyaradzo Funeral Assurance Company.
He can be contacted on:mavmat67@hotmail.com