Childhood grief
Myths about childhood grief:
1. Children know what they have been told.
a. Truth: Children know what they understand, and that changes with age, information and ability to think abstractly.
2. Children who grieve well at the time of loss, never need to revisit their grief.
a. Truth: Grief is usually revisited, re-experienced, and rediscovered multiple times in childhood as its meaning changes.
3. Children who are thriving, feeling joyful, and living in the moment are not experiencing grief.
a. Truth: Childhood grief is not an ever-present, overriding feeling that colors everything. It is more likely an erratic, episodic, sometimes explosive sadness or anger that comes on unexpectedly, or is triggered by an event.
4. Grief is about the loss of one person, and what that person meant to you.
a. Truth: The younger the child, the more grief is about the loss of security, safely, constancy and trust in the world. If this could happen, what else might?
5. Grief is expressed by feelings of sadness and loss.
a. Truth: Childhood grief is often expressed in physical ways: regression, anxiety, fears, or in sleep, mood and eating disturbances.
6. Pictures, stories, and verbal recollections of the loved one are soothing.
a. Truth: The younger the child, the less helpful language based or visual memory recollections may be. Artistic, expressive, and in- the -moment experiences that create new learning about the lost loved one can be more soothing.
7. Grief requires memory. If the child does not remember the person, they cannot be grieving.
a. Truth: Grief is about absence, the hole that cannot be filled. The parent never-known can be wondered about, missed, and grieved.
8. Children understand that a loved one’s death is not their fault.
a. Truth: Younger children may feel that there is something wrong with them that caused, or contributed or made them deserving of this tragedy. What is wrong with me that this happened to me?
Always remember that children are growing and changing every day. So is their understanding, their experience and their expression of grief. We cannot prevent that, but we can nurture their natural resilience skills, and encourage expression of these changes, so that each new emergence of their loss is met with love, understanding and strength.
I Know It in My Heart: Walking through Grief with a Child
SheWrites Press 2017
This one is worth a repeat because the need never dies, the myths linger, and the truths about grief are for us all
All so true. And thank you for sharing. Children's grief often goes unnoticed. As someone whose mother died when I was 11 I write regularly on the theme of childhood grief (on my blog) because it's not discussed enough. Thank you for helping to raise awareness and for offering these excellent insights.